\bung  Alaskans 
Onlhe  Missouri 

EMERSON  HOUGH 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 
ON  THE  MISSOURI 


BOOKS  BY 
EMERSON  HOUGH 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 
YOUNG  ALASKANS  ON  THE  TRAIL 
YOUNG   ALASKANS   IN   THE  ROCKIES 
YOUNG  ALASKANS  IN  THE  FAR  NORTH 
YOUNG  ALASKANS  ON  THE  MISSOURI 

Harper  &  Brothers 
Publishers 


THE 
YOUNG  ALASKANS 

ON  THE  MISSOURI 


By 

EMERSON  HOUGH 

Author  of 

"TOUNO  ALASKANS    IN    THE    BOCXIES" 

"TOUNO  ALASKANS  IN  THB  FAR  NOBTH** 

ETC. 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 


YOUNG  ALASKANS   ON    THE   MISSOURI 

Copyright,  1922 
By  Harper  &  Brothers 
Printed  in  the  U.  S.  A. 

First  Edition 

l-W 


CONTENTS 


/UtftUoA/ 


CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  FOLLOWING  LEWIS   AND   CLARK 1 

II.  READY   FOR  THE   RIVER 9 

III.  "ADVENTURER,    OF   AMERICA"    17 

IV.  THE  EARLY  ADVENTURERS   23 

V.  OFF  UP  THE  RIVER   36 

VI.  THE  LOG  OF  THE  "ADVENTURER" 41 

VII.  THE  GATE  OF  THE  WEST 49 

VIII.  Ho!  FOR  THE  PLATTE!  59 

IX.  SHIPWRECK    67 

X.  AT  THE   PLATTE    73 

XI.  AMONG  THE  Sioux    83 

XII.  THE  LOST  HUNTER    89 

XIII.  GETTING   NORTH    100 

XIV.  IN  DAYS  OF  OLD 115 

XV.  AMONG  THE   MANDANS    128 

XVI.  OLD  DAYS  ON  THE  RIVER 144 

XVII.  AT  THE  YELLOWSTONE  155 

XVIII.  WHERE  THE  ROAD  FORKED 168 

XIX.  AT  THE  GREAT  FALLS   187 

XX.  READY  FOR  THE  RIVER  HEAD 201 

XXI.  THE    PACK    TRAIN    210 

XXII.  AT  THE  THREE  FORKS 226 

XXIII.  SUNSET  ON  THE  OLD  RANGE 235 

XXIV.  NEARING  THE  SOURCE   246 

XXV.  BEAVERHEAD  CAMP  262 

XXVI.  THE  JUMP-OFF  CAMP   276 

XXVII.  THE  UTMOST  SOURCE  294 

XXVIII.  SPORT  WITH  ROD  AND  REEL 302 

XXIX.  THE  HEAD  OF  THE  GREAT  RIVER 310 

XXX.  SPORTING  PLANS   327 

XXXI.  AMONG  THE  GRAYLING   340 

XXXII.  AT  BILLY'S  RANCH   349 

XXXIII.  HOMEWARD  BOUND   .  .  371 


M703989 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

THEY  TURNED  AWAY  FROM  THE  GREAT  FALLS  OF 
THE  ANCIENT  RIVER  WITH  A  FEELING  OF 
SADNESS  Frontispiece 

THEY  SAW  HIM  SCRAMBLE  UP  THE  BANK,  LIE 
FOR  AN  INSTANT  HALF  EXHAUSTED,  AND 
THEN  COME  RUNNING  DOWN  THE  SHORE  TO 
THEM  Facing  p.  70 

BEFORE   ANYONE    COULD   HELP    HIM    HE    WAS 

FLUNG  FULL  LENGTH,  AND  LAY  MOTIONLESS  "      216 

JESSE  SUDDENLY  STOOPED,  THEN  ROSE  WITH  AN 

EXCLAMATION    .  "      264 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 
ON  THE  MISSOURI 

CHAPTER  I 

FOLLOWING  LEWIS  AND  CLARK 

"Y V  7  ELL,  sister,"  said  Uncle  Dick,  address- 
W  ing  that  lady  as  she  sat  busy  with  her 
needlework  at  the  window  of  a  comfortable 
hotel  in  the  city  of  St.  Louis,  "I'm  getting  rest- 
less, now  that  the  war  is  over.  Time  to  be 
starting  out.  Looks  like  I'd  have  to  borrow 
those  boys  again  and  hit  the  trail.  Time  to 
be  on  our  way !" 

"Richard!"  The  lady  tapped  her  foot  im- 
patiently, a  little  frown  gathering  on  her 
forehead. 

"Well,  then?" 

"Well,  you're  always  just  starting  out! 
You've  been  hitting  the  trail  all  your  life. 
Wasn't  the  war  enough?" 
I  "Oh,  well !"  Uncle  Dick  smiled  humorously 
as  he  glanced  at  his  leg,  which  extended  before 
him  rather  stiffly  as  he  sat. 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"I  should  think  it  was  enough !"  said  his  sis- 
ter, laying  down  her  work. 

"But  it  didn't  last!"  said  Uncle  Dick. 

"How  can  you  speak  so !" 

"Well,  it  didn't.  Of  course,  Rob  got  in,  even 
if  he  had  to  run  away  and  smouch  a  little  about 
how  old  he  was.  But  he  wasn't  through  his 
training.  And  as  for  the  other  boys,  Frank 
was  solemn  as  an  owl  because  the  desk  sergeant 
laughed  at  him  and  told  him  to  go  back  to  the 
Boy  Scouts;  and  Jesse  was  almost  in  tears 
over  it." 

"All  our  boys  r 

"Yes !  All  our  boys.  The  whole  country'd 
have  been  in  it  if  it  had  gone  on.  America 
doesn't  play  any  game  to  lose  it." 

"Yes,  and  look  at  you!" 

Uncle  Dick  moved  his  leg.  "Cheap!"  said 
he.  "Cheap!  But  we  don't  talk  of  that.  What 
I  was  talking  about,  or  was  going  to  talk  about, 
was  something  by  way  of  teaching  these  boys 
what  a  country  this  America  is  and  always' 
has  been ;  how  it  never  has  played  any  game  to 
lose  it,  and  never  is  going  to." 

"Well,  Richard,  what  is  it  this  time?" 
His  sister  began  to  fold  up  her  work,  sigh- 
ing, and  to  smooth  it  out  over  her  knee. 
"We've  just  got  settled  down  here  in  our 

2 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

own  country,  and  I  was  looking  for  a  little 
rest  and  peace." 

"You  need  it,  after  your  Red  Cross  work, 
and  you  shall  have  it.  You  shall  rest.  While 
you  do,  I'll  take  the  boys  on  the  trail,  the  Peace 
Trail — the  greatest  trail  of  progress  and  peace 
all  the  world  ever  knew." 

"Whatever  can  you  mean?" 

"And  made  by  two  young  chaps,  officers  of 
our  Army,  not  much  more  than  boys  they  were, 
neither  over  thirty.  They  found  America  for 
us,  or  a  big  part  of  it.  I  call  .them  the  two 
absolutely  splendidest  and  perfectly  bulliest 
boys  in  history." 

"Oh,  I  know !  You  mean  Lewis  and  Clark ! 
You're  always  talking  of  them  to  the  boys. 
Ever  since  we  came  to  St.  Louis " 

"Yes,  ever  since  we  came  to  this  old  city, 
where  those  two  boys  started  out  West,  before 
anybody  knew  what  the  West  was  or  even 
where  it  was.  I've  been  talking  to  our  boys 
about  those  boys !  Rather  I  should  say,  those 
two  young  gentlemen  of  our  Army,  over  a 
hundred  years  ago — Captain  Meriwether 
Lewis  and  Captain  William  Clark." 

His  sister  nodded  gravely,  "I  know." 

"What  water  has  run  by  here,  since  1804, 
in  these  two  rivers,  the  Mississippi  and  the 

3 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

Missouri !  How  the  country  has  grown !  How 
the  world  has  changed!  And  how  we  have 
forgotten ! 

"That's  why  I  want  to  take  them,  even  now, 
my  dear  sister,  these  young  Americans,  over 
that  very  same  old  trail — not  so  long  and  hard 
and  full  of  danger  now.  Why?  Lest  we  for- 
get !  Lest  our  young  Americans  forget !  And 
we  all  are  forgetting.  Not  right. 

"You  see?  Because  this  old  town  of  St. 
Louis  was  then  only  a  village,  and  we  just  had 
bought  our  unknown  country  of  France,  and 
this  town  was  on  the  eastern  edge  of  it,  the 
gate  of  it — the  gate  to  the  West,  it  used  to 
be,  before  steam  came,  while  everything  went 
by  keel  boat;  oar  or  paddle  and  pole  and 
sail  and  cordelle.  Ah,  Sis,  those  were  the 
days!" 

"Think  of  the  time  it  must  have  taken !" 

"Think  of  the  times  they  must  have  been !" 

"But  now  one  never  hears  of  Lewis  and 
Clark.  We  go  by  rail,  so  much  faster.  As  for 
going  up-river  by  steamboat,  I  never  heard  of 
such  a  thing!" 

"But  the  boys  have.  I  caught  Jesse,  even, 
pondering  over  my  Catlin,  looking  at  the  buf- 
falo and  Indian  pictures." 

"I  never  heard  of  Catlin." 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"Of  course  not.  Well,  he  came  much  later 
than  my  captains,  and  was  an  artist.  But  my 
captains  had  found  the  way.  Rob  and  Frank 
know.  They've  read  the  worked-over  Jour- 
nals of  Lewis  and  Clark.  Me,  I've  even  seen 
the  originals.  I  swear  those  curious  pages 
make  my  heart  jump  to  this  very  day,  even 
after  our  travels  on  the  soil  of  France  just 
now — France,  the  country  that  practically  gave 
us  our  country,  or  almost  all  of  it  west  of  the 
Missouri,  more  than  a  hundred  years  ago.  She 
didn't  know,  and  we  didn't  know.  Well,  we 
helped  pay  the  rest  of  the  price,  if  there  was 
anything  left  back,  at  Chateau  Thierry  and 
in  the  Argonne." 

His  sister  was  looking  at  the  stiffened  leg, 
and  Uncle  Dick  frowned  at  that.  "It's  noth- 
ing," said  he.  "Think  of  the  others." 

"And  all  for  what?"  he  mused,  later.  "All 
for  what,  if  it  wasn't  for  America,  and  for 
what  America  was  meant  to  be,  and  for  what 
America  was  and  is?  So,  about  my  boys — 
what  d'ye  think,  my  dear,  if  they  wandered 
with  me,  hobbling  back  from  the  soil  of  old 
France,  over  the  soil  of  the  New  France  that 
once  lay  up  the  Big  Muddy,  yon — that  New 
France  which  Napoleon  gave  to  make  New 
America?  Any  harm  about  that,  what?  .  .  . 

5 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

Lest  we  forget !    Lest  all  this  America  of  ours 
to-day  forget !    Eh,  what  ?" 

By  this  time  his  sister  had  quite  finished 
smoothing  out  the  work  on  her  knee.  "Of 
course,  I  knew  all  along  you'd  go  somewhere," 
she  said.  "You'd  find  a  war,  or  anything  like 
that,  too  tame!  Will  you  never  settle  down, 
Richard!" 

"I  hope  not." 

"But  you'll  take  the  boys  out  of  school." 

"Not  at  all.  To  the  contrary,  I'll  put  them 
in  school,  and  a  good  one.  Besides,  we'll  not 
start  till  after  school  is  anyhow  almost  out  for 
the  spring  term.  We'll  just  be  about  as  early 
as  Lewis  and  Clark  up  the  Missouri  in  the 
spring." 

"You'll  be  going  by  rail?" 

"Certainly  not!  We'll  be  going  by  boat, 
small  boat,  little  boat,  maybe  not  all  boat." 

"A  year !    Two  years !" 

Uncle  Dick  smiled.  "Well,  no.  We've  only 
got  this  summer  to  go  up  the  Missouri  and 
back,  so,  maybe  as  Rob  did  when  he  enlisted 
for  eighteen,  we'll  have  to  smouch  a  little!" 

"I'll  warrant  you've  talked  it  all  over  with 
those  boys  already." 

Uncle  Dick  smiled  guiltily.  "I  shouldn't 
wonder !"  he  admitted. 

6 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"And,  naturally,  they're  keen  to  go !" 

"Naturally.  What  boy  wouldn't  be,  if  he 
were  a  real  boy  and  a  real  American?  Our 
own  old,  strange,  splendid  America!  What 
boy  wouldn't?" 

"Besides,"  he  added,  "I'd  like  to  trace  that 
old  trail  myself,  some  day.  I've  always  been 
crazy  to." 

"Yes,  crazy !  Always  poring  over  old  maps. 
Why  do  we  need  study  the  old  passes  over  the 
Rockies,  Richard?  There's  not  an  earthly  bit 
of  use  in  it.  All  we  need  know  is  when  the 
train  starts,  and  you  can  look  on  the  time  card 
for  all  the  rest.  We  don't  need  geography  of 
that  sort  now.  What  we  need  now  is  a  geog- 
raphy of  Europe,  so  we  can  see  where  the 
battles  were  fought,  and  that  sort  of  thing." 

"Yes?  Well,  that's  what  I'm  getting  at. 
I've  just  a  notion  that  we're  studying  the  map 
of  Europe — and  Asia — to-day  and  to-morrow, 
when  we  study  the  old  mountain  passes  of  the 
Rockies,  my  dear. 

"And,"  he  added,  firmly,  "my  boys  shall 
know  them !  Because  I  know  that  in  that  way 
they'll  be  studying  not  only  the  geography,  but 
the  history  of  all  the  world !  When  they  come 
back,  maybe  they — maybe  you — will  know  why 
so  many  boys  now  are  asleep  in  the  Argonne 

7 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

hills  and  woods  in  France.  Maybe  they'll  see 
the  old  Lewis  and  Clark  trail  extending  on  out 
across  the  Pacific,  even." 

"You're  so  funny,  Richard!" 

"Oh,  I  reckon  so,  I  reckon  so!  The  old 
Crusaders  were  funny  people,  too — marching 
all  the  way  from  England  and  France,  just  to 
take  Jerusalem.  But  look  what  a  walk  they 
had!" 


CHAPTER  II 

READY  FOR  THE  RIVER 

UNCLE  DICK  made  his  way  to  the  library 
room,  where  he  found  his  three  young 
companions  on  so  many  other  trips  of  adven- 
ture.1 

"So  there  you  are,  eh?"  he  began.  "Rob,  I 
see  you're  poring  over  some  old  book,  as  usual. 
What  is  it — same  Journal  of  Lewis  and 
Clark?" 

"Yes,  sir,"  said  Rob  Mclntyre  looking  up, 
his  eyes  shining.  "It's  great !" 

"And  here's  John  Hardy  with  his  maps!" 
exclaimed  Jesse  Wilcox.  "Look  it !  He's  got 
a  notion  he  can  do  a  map  as  well  as  Captain 
William  Clark." 

"He's  something  of  a  born  map  maker, 
then!"  responded  Uncle  Dick.  "There  was 
one  of  the  born  geniuses  of  the  world  in  map 
making.  What  a  man  he'd  have  been  in  our 
work — running  preliminary  surveys !  He  just 
naturally  knew  the  way  across  country,  and  he 

'See  Vol.  I,  The  Young  Alaskans;  Vol.  II,  The  Young 
Alaskans  on  the  Trail;  Vol.  Ill,  The  Young  Alaskans  in  the 
Rockies;  Vol.  IV,  The  Young  Alaskans  in  the.  Far  North. 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

just  naturally  knew  how  to  set  it  down.  On 
hides,  with  a  burnt  stick — on  the  sand  with  a 
willow  twig — in  the  ashes  with  a  pipe  stem — 
that's  how  his  maps  grew.  The  Indians  showed 
him ;  and  he  showed  us." 

"I've  often  tried  to  tell,"  said  Rob,  "which 
was  the  greater  of  those  two  men,  Clark  or 
Lewis." 

"You  never  will,"  said  his  uncle.  "They 
were  the  two  greatest  bunkies  and  buddies  of 
all  the  world.  Clark  was  the  redhead;  Lewis 
the  dark  and  sober  man.  Clark  was  the  en- 
gineer ;  Lewis  the  leader  of  men.  Clark  had  the 
business  man  in  him ;  Lewis  something  more — 
the  vision,  the  faith  of  the  soul  as  much  as  the 
self-reliance  of  the  body.  A  great  pair." 

"I'll  say  they  were!"  assented  John.  "My! 
what  times !" 

"And  what  a  country !"  added  Jesse,  looking 
up  from  his  map. 

"Yes,  son ;  and  what  a  country !"  His  uncle 
spoke  seriously. 

"But  now,  fellows,"  he  added,  "about  that 
little  pasear  of  ours — that  slide  of  a  couple  of 
thousand  miles  this  summer,  up  the  little  old 
Missouri  to  the  Rockies  and  down  the  river 
again — thing  we  were  talking  of — what  do  you 
say?" 

10 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"Oh,  but  we  can't!"  said  Jesse. 

"Oh,  but  I'll  bet  we  can!"  said  John,  who 
caught  a  twinkle  in  Uncle  Dick's  eye. 

"Yes,  and  we  will!"  said  Rob,  also  noting 
his  smile. 

"Yes,"  said  Uncle  Dick.  "I've  just  come 
from  talking  with  the  acting  commanding  offi- 
cer. She  says  that  on  the  whole  she  gives 
consent,  provided  I  don't  keep  you  out  of 
school." 

"It  took  Lewis  and  Clark  two  years,"  de- 
murred John.  "But  they  were  out  of  school — 
even  though  poor  Will  Clark  hadn't  learned 
much  about  spelling.  They  didn't  have  to  get 
back  by  the  first  week  in  September." 

"And  we  don't  want  to  scamp  it,"  said  thor- 
oughgoing, sober  Rob. 

"But  we  don't  want  to  motor  it,"  countered 
John. 

"I'll  tell  you,"  said  Jesse  Wilcox,  the  young- 
est and  smallest  of  the  three.  We  can  go  by 
power  boat,  most  way,  anyhow.  That's  not 
scamping  it,  all  things  considered,  is  it?" 

"By  Jove!"  said  Uncle  Dick,  and  again:  "By 
Jove!  An  idea!" 

"But  about  how  big  a  boat  do  you  think  this 
particular  family,  just  after  the  war,  can 
afford?" 

2  II 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"We  could  easy  buy  a  overman's  fishing 
skiff,"  said  Jesse,  sagely ;  "twenty  feet  long  and 
narrow  bottomed,  but  she  floats  light  and  runs 
easy  and  can  carry  a  load." 

"But  that's  not  a  motor  boat,  son,"  said  Uncle 
Dick.  "Do  you  think  we  can  row  to  the  head 
of  the  Missouri  and  get  back  by  September  ?" 

"Outboard  motor,"  said  Jesse,  calmly. 

"Hah !  As  though  that  could  stem  the  June 
rise  on  the  Muddy!" 

"Two  outboard  motors,  one  on  each  side  the 
stern,  rigged  on  a  cross  plank,"  said  Jesse, 
never  smiling.  "Besides,  a  head  sail  when  the 
wind  is  right  behind.  And  a  rope  if  we  got  a 
head  wind.  And  the  oars  and  paddles,  too. 
We've  paddled  hours.  Every  little." 

"We  could  get  gas  easy,"  said  John.  "Lots 
of  towns  all  along,  now." 

"Easy  as  shooting  fish,"  drawled  Jesse. 
"I'm  making  a  model  of  a  new  flying  ship  now, 
though  it  isn't  all  done.  I  can  run  one  of  those 
motors." 

"What  say,  Rob?"  Uncle  Dick  turned  to  the 
oldest  of  the  three,  and  the  one  of  soberest 
judgment,  usually. 

"I  shouldn't  wonder  if  it's  the  answer,  sir," 
said  Rob.  "How  many  miles  a  day  must  we 
average?" 

12 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"As  many  as  we  can.  Lewis  and  Clark  and 
their  big  boat  did  eight  or  ten,  sometimes  fif- 
teen or  twenty — the  average  was  about  nine 
miles  a  day.  It  took  them  all  summer  and  fall 
to  get  to  the  Mandans.  That's  above  Mandan, 
South  Dakota — a  thousand  miles  or  so,  eh?" 

"Just  sixteen  hundred  and  ten  miles,  sir," 
said  Rob,  "according  to  their  figures.  Just 
about  nine  miles  a  day,  start  to  finish  of  that 
part  of  the  run,  here  to  the  Mandans — though 
the  modern  estimates  only  call  it  fourteen  hun- 
dred and  fifty- two  miles." 

"If  we  can't  beat  that  average  I'll  eat  the 
boat,"  said  Jesse,  gravely. 

"Well,"  said  Uncle  Dick,  beginning  to  bite 
his  fingers,  as  he  often  did  when  studying  some 
problem,  "let's  see.  A  good  kicker  might  do 
two  or  three  miles  an  hour,  by  picking  out  the 
water.  Two  good  kickers  might  put  her  up  to 
five,  good  conditions.  Some  days  we  might  do 
forty  miles." 

"And  some  days,  on  long  reaches  and  the 
wind  O.K.,  we'd  do  forty-five  or  fifty,"  said 
Rob.  "Of  course,  we  can't  figure  on  top  notch 
all  the  way.  We've  got  to  include  bad  days, 
break-downs,  accidents,  delays  we  can't  figure 
on  at  home,  but  that  always  get  in  their  work 
somehow.  Look  at  all  our  own  other  trips." 

13 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"Depends  on  how  many  hours  you  work," 
said  Frank.  "We  don't  belong  to  the  long- 
shoremen's union,  you  know.  Some  days  we 
might  travel  twelve  hours,  if  we'd  nothing  else 
to  do.  And  I  don't  think  there's  much  fishing, 
and  it  would  be  off  season  for  shooting,  most 
of  the  time." 

"I'll  tell  you,"  said  Uncle  Dick,  after  a  time. 
"I  doubt  if  we  could  do  it  all  the  way  by  boat  by 
September.  But  I'll  see  your  teacher,  here  in 
St.  Louis,  where  we're  all  going  to  winter  this 
year,  and  arrange  with  him  to  let  you  study 
outside  for  the  first  few  weeks  of  the  fall  term 
in  case  we  don't  get  back.  You'll  have  to  work 
while  you  travel,  understand  that." 

The  boys  all  agreed  to  this  and  gave  their 
promise  to  do  their  best,  if  only  they  could  be 
allowed  to  make  this  wonderful  trip  over  the 
first  and  greatest  exploring  trail  of  the  West. 

"It  can  perhaps  be  arranged,"  said  Uncle 
Dick. 

"You  mean,  it  has  been  arranged !"  said  Rob. 
"You've  spoken  to  our  school  principal !" 

"Well,  yes,  then!  And  you  can  cut  off  a 
little  from  the  spring  term,  too.  But  it's  all  on 
condition  that  you  come  back  also  with  a  knowl- 
edge of  that  much  history,  additional  to  your 
regular  studies." 

14 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"Oh,  agreed  to  that!"  said  Rob;  while  John 
and  Jesse  began  to  drop  their  books  and  eagerly 
come  closer  to  their  older  guide  and  companion. 

"What'll  we  need  to  take  ?"  asked  John.  "We 
can't  live  on  the  country  as  we  did  up  North." 

"Cut  it  light,  young  men.  One  week's  grub 
at  a  time,  say.  The  little  tent,  with  a  wall,  and 
the  poles  along — we  can  spread  it  on  the  boat 
if  we  like." 

"Not  the  mosquito  tent?"  asked  Jesse. 

"No,  not  after  the  seasoning  you  chaps  have 
had  in  the  North.  Some  mosquitoes,  but  not 
so  many  for  us  old-timers.  Take  bars,  no  head 
nets.  We're  not  tenderfeet,  you  see." 

"A  blanket,  a  quilt,  and  an  eiderdown  quilt 
each  ?"  suggested  John. 

"You'll  not!  Did  Lewis  and  Clark  have 
eiderdown?" 

"No,  but  they  had  buffalo  robes !" 

"And  so  have  we!"  Uncle  Dick  laughed 
aloud  in  triumph.  "I  found  three  in  an  old  fur 
trader's  loft  here,  and — well,  I  bought  them. 
He'd  forgotten  he  had  them — forty  years  and 
more.  A  blanket  and  a  quilt  and  a  robe  each, 
or  Jesse  and  John  to  divide  the  biggest  robe — 
and  there  we  are !" 

"A  tarp  to  go  over  all,"  said  Rob. 

"Yes.    And  our  regular  mess  kit.    And  the 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

usual  wool  scout  clothes  and  good  shoes  and 
soft  hat.  That's  about  all.  Two  trout  rods, 
for  the  mountains.  One  shotgun  for  luck,  and 
one  .22  rifle — no  more.  It'll  make  a  load,  but 
Jesse's  river  ship  will  carry  it.  Nasty  and 
noisy,  but  nice,  eh  ?" 

"It'll  be  fine!"  said  Jesse.  "Of  course,  we 
take  our  maps  and  books  and  papers,  in  a 
valise?" 

"Yes.  I'll  have  a  copy  of  the  original 
Journal." 

"And  we'll  always  know  where  we  are?" 
thus  John.  "That  is,"  he  added,  "where  they 
were?" 

"Yes,"  said  Uncle  Dick,  reverently  enough. 
"As  near  as  we  can  figure  on  the  face  of  a 
country  so  changed.  And  we'll  try  to  put  in  all 
the  things  they  saw,  try  to  understand  what 
the  country  must  have  been  at  that  time?  Is 
that  agreed?" 

Each  boy  came  up  and  stood  at  attention. 
Each  gave  the  Boy  Scout's  salute.  Uncle  Dick 
noted  with  a  grim  smile  the  full,  snappy,  mili- 
tary salute  of  the  American  Army  which  Rob 
now  gave  him.  He  returned  it  gravely  and 
courteously,  as  an  officer  does. 


16 


CHAPTER  III 
"ADVENTURER,  OF  AMERICA" 

IT  was  on  a  morning  in  early  spring  that  our 
four  adventurers  found  themselves  at  the 
side  of  their  boat,  which  rested  on  the  bank  of 
the  great  Missouri  River,  not  far  above  its 
mouth.  Their  little  tent  stood,  ready  for  strik- 
ing, and  all  their  preparations  for  the  start  now 
were  made.  Rob  stood  with  a  paint  pot  and 
brush  in  hand,  at  the  bow  of  the  boat. 

"She's  dry,  all  right,  by  now,  I  think,"  said 
he.  "If  we  put  a  name  on  the  stern  board  the 
paint  could  dry  without  being  touched.  What 
shall  we  christen  her?" 

"Call  her  'Liberty/"  suggested  Jesse,  or, 
say,  'America/  " 

"Fine,  but  too  usual.    Give  us  a  name,  John." 

"Well,  I  say,  'Columbia/  because  we  are 
headed  for  the  Columbia,  the  same  as  Lewis 
and  Clark." 

"Too    matter-of-fact!      Give    us    a    jollier 


name." 


"Well,  give   us   one   yourself,    Rob,"    said 
Uncle  Dick,  "since  you're  so  particular." 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"All  right!  How'd  'Adventurer,  of  St. 
Louis/ do?" 

"Not  so  bad — not  so  bad.  But  to  Lewis  and 
Clark,  St.  Louis  was  only  one  point  of  their 
journey,  important  as  it  was." 

"I'll  tell  you,"  broke  in  Jesse,  the  youngest. 
"Call  her  Adventurer,  of  America'  You  can 
paint  it  all  on,  if  you  use  small  letters  for  part, 
like  the  steamboats." 

"That's  the  name !"  said  Rob.  "Because  that 
was  a  great  adventure  that  Lewis  and  Clark 
were  taking  on;  and  it  was  all  for  America — 
then  and  now.  Hard  to  live  up  to.  But,  you 
see,  we're  only  following." 

"What  do  you  say,  Uncle  Dick?"  asked 
John. 

"I  like  it,"  replied  the  latter.  "It  will  do,  so 
paint  it  on,  Rob;  and  all  of  you  be  careful 
not  to  smudge  it.  It'll  be  dry  by  to-morrow 
morning,  for  this  fantail  rides  high  above  the 
motors. 

"Finish  drying  and  packing  the  dishes  now, 
and  let's  be  off  when  Rob  gets  done.  We're 
exactly  one  hundred  and  eighteen  years  to  a 
day  and  an  hour  after  the  boats  of  Lewis  and 
Clark  at  this  very  place — only,  Lewis  went 
across  by  land  to  St.  Charles,  and  saved  a  little 
of  his  time  by  meeting  the  boats  there." 

18 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"And  that  was  the  real  start,  wasn't  it,  Uncle 
Dick  ?"  demanded  Frank. 

"In  a  way,  yes.  But  over  yonder,  across  the 
Mississippi,  on  the  river  Du  Bois,  in  the  Ameri- 
can Bottoms,  Will  Clark  had  built  the  cabins 
for  the  men's  winter  quarters.  And  long  be- 
fore that,  Meriwether  Lewis  had  left  Wash- 
ington after  saying  good-by  to  Mr.  Jefferson. 
And  then  he  stopped  awhile  near  where  Pitts- 
burgh is,  to  get  his  boats  ready  to  go  down  the 
Ohio,  and  get  men.  And  then  he  picked  up 
Clark  where  Louisville  now  is.  And  then  he 
left  the  Ohio  River  and  crossed  by  horseback 
to  the  Army  post  across  from  here,  to  get  still 
more  men  for  the  expedition — soldiers,  you 
see,  good  hardy  men  they  were,  who  knew  the 
backwoods  life  and  feared  nothing.  So  after 
they  got  all  of  the  expedition  together,  they 
made  winter  quarters  over  yonder,  and  in  the 
spring  they  came  over  here,  and  the  great  fleet 
of  three  boats  and  forty-five  men  started  off  on 
their  adventure. 

"Of  course,  Rob,  you  know  the  incident  of 
the  Three  Flags?" 

Rob  nodded. 

"That  was  a  great  day,  when  the  American 
army  of  the  West,  twenty-nine  men  in  buck- 
skin, under  this  young  captain  of  thirty  years, 

19 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

marched  into  St.  Louis  to  take  possession  of 
the  Great  West  for  America.  And  St.  Louis 
in  twenty-four  hours  was  under  the  flags  of 
three  great  countries,  Spain,  France,  and  the 
United  States. 

"You  see — and  I  want  you  to  study  these 
things  hard  some  day — Napoleon,  the  Emperor 
of  France,  was  at  war.  This  Western  region 
belonged  to  Spain,  or  she  said  it  did,  but  she 
ceded  it  to  Napoleon ;  and  then  when  he  didn't 
think  he  could  hold  it  against  Great  Britain,  he 
sold  it  to  us. 

"Now  this  had  all  been  country  largely  set- 
tled by  French  people  who  had  come  down 
long  ago  from  the  Great  Lakes.  They  didn't 
think  Spain  had  exercised  real  sovereignty. 
Now  we  had  bought  up  both  claims,  the  Span- 
ish and  the  French ;  so  we  owned  St.  Louis  all 
right,  going  or  coming. 

"So,  first  the  Spanish  flag  over  the  old  fort 
was  struck.  Next  came  the  French.  And  the 
French  loved  the  place  so  much,  they  begged 
they  might  have  their  flag  fly  over  it  for  at 
least  one  night.  Captain  Lewis  said  they  might, 
for  he  was  a  courteous  gentleman,  of  course. 
But  orders  were  orders.  So  in  the  morning 
the  flag  of  France  came  down  and  the  Flag  of 
the  United  States  of  America  was  raised, 

20 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

where  it  has  been  ever  since,  and  I  think  will 
always  remain.  Those  events  happened  on 
March  9  and  10,  1804. 

"So  there  they  were,  with  the  Flag  up  over  a 
country  that  nobody  knew  anything  at  all  about. 
Then  they  started  out,  on  May  14  of  that  year, 
1804.  And  since  that  time  that  unknown 
America  has  grown  to  be  one  of  the  richest, 
if  not  the  very  richest,  land  in  the  world. 
And  since  that  time,  so  much  has  the  world 
changed,  I  have  seen  three  flags  flying  at  the 
same  time  over  a  city  in  France — those  of 
France,  of  Great  Britain,  and  of  America, 
and  all  at  peace  with  one  another,  though  all 
at  war  together  as  allies  in  a  cause  they  felt 
was  just.  May  they  float  together  now! 
Aye,  and  may  Spain  have  no  fear  of  any  of 
the  three." 

"Are  you  about  done  with  the  painting, 
Rob?"  concluded  Uncle  Dick. 

"Yes,  sir,  finished." 

"Look  it!"  said  John. 

Jesse  was  coming  down  from  the  tent,  un- 
rolling something  wrapped  around  a  stick. 
"Well  now,  well  now,"  he  drawled,  "where 
shall  I  put  this?" 

"Company,  'tenshun!"  barked  Uncle  Dick. 
"Colors  pass !"  And  all  snapped  again  into  the 

21 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

salute  while  Jesse  fastened  the  Flag  into  the 
bow  of  the  Adventurer,  of  America. 

"Now  we're  about  all  ready,"  said  Jesse, 
gravely.  And  he  also  stood  at  the  salute  which 
good  Scouts  give  the  Flag,  as  a  little  band  of 
strong  men  in  buckskin  had  done,  not  far 
away,  more  than  a  hundred  years  ago. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  EARLY  ADVENTURERS 

WELL,  are  you  all  set,  fellows?"  de- 
manded Uncle  Dick,  at  last,  turning 
to  his  young  companions  and  taking  a  look  over 
the  dismantled  camp. 

"Just  about,  sir,"  answered  Rob,  who  always 
was  accepted  as  the  next  officer  to  Uncle  Dick 
in  command. 

"Load  her  down  by  the  head  all  you  can," 
said  the  latter,  as  the  boys  began  storing  the 
remaining  duffle  aboard. 

"Why?"  asked  Jesse,  who  always  wanted  to 
know  reasons. 

"I'll  tell  you.  This  water  is  so  roily  you 
can't  see  into  it  very  deep.  It  has  a  lot  of 
snags  and  sweepers  and  buried  stuff.  Now,  if 
she  rides  with  bows  high,  she  slips  farther  up, 
say,  on  a  sunken  log.  If  her  bow  is  down  a 
little,  she  either  doesn't  slide  on,  or  else  she 
slips  on  over." 

"Oh!    I  hadn't  thought  of  that." 

Uncle  Dick  grinned.  "Well,  maybe  I 
wouldn't,  either,  if  I  hadn't  been  reading  my 

23 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

Lewis  and  Clark  Journal  all  over  again.  They 
speak  of  that  very  thing.  Oh,  this  is  a  bad  old 
river,  all  right.  Those  men  had  a  hard  time." 

"But,  sir,"  answered  Rob,  "if  we  load  too  far 
down  by  the  bow,  our  stern  motors  won't  take 
hold  so  well.  We've  got  to  bury  them." 

"That's  true,  their  weight  throws  the  bow 
very  high.  I  doubt  if  we  can  do  much  better 
than  have  an  even  keel,  but  if  she'll  kick  all 
right,  keep  her  down  all  you  can  in  front,  for 
if  we  ever  do  ride  a  log,  we'll  strip  off  the 
propellers,  and  maybe  the  end  of  the  boat,  too. 
Better  be  safe  than  sorry,  always." 

"They  didn't  have  as  good  a  boat  as  ours, 
did  they?"  John  spoke  with  a  good  deal  of 
pride  as  he  cast  an  eye  over  the  long,  racy  hull 
of  the  Adventurer,  whose  model  was  one 
evolved  for  easy  travel  upstream  under  oars. 

"Well,  no,  but  still  they  got  along,  in  those 
days,  after  their  own  fashion.  You  see,  they 
started  out  with  three  boats.  First  was  a  big 
keel  boat,  fifty-five  feet  long,  with  twenty- two 
oars  and  a  big  square  sail.  She  drew  three  feet 
of  water,  loaded,  and  had  a  ten-foot  deck  for- 
ward, with  lockers  midship,  which  they  could 
stack  up  for  a  breastworks  against  Indian 
attacks,  if  they  had  to.  Oh,  she  was  quite  a 
ship,  all  right. 

24 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"Then  they  had  a  large  red  perogue — must 
have  been  something  like  ours,  a  rangy  river 
skiff,  built  of  boards;  certainly  not  like  the 
little  cypress  dugouts  they  call  'peewoogs'  in 
Louisiana. 

"Now  they  had  a  third  boat,  the  'white 
peroque,'  they  spell  it.  It  was  smaller,  carry- 
ing six  oars.  The  red  skiff  carried  the  eight 
French  voyageurs " 

"We  ought  to  have  all  their  names,  those 
fellows,"  said  Frank. 

"Well,  write  them  down — I've  got  the  Jour- 
nal handy.  Here  Captain  Clark  gives  them, 
as  they  were  set  into  squads,  May  26th,  far 
up  the  river.  You  see,  they  were  a  military 
party — there  were  twenty-nine  on  the  official 
rolls  as  volunteers,  not  mentioning  Captains 
Lewis  and  Clark,  or  York,  Captain  Clark's 
negro  body  servant,  who  all  traveled  on  the 
big  boat : 

Orderly  Book :  Lewis. 

Detachment  Orders 
May  26th,  1804. 

The  Commanding  Officers  Direct,  that  the  three 
Squads  under  the  command  of  Sergt8-  Floyd,  Ordway 
and  Pryor,  heretofore  forming  two  messes  each,  shall 
untill  further  orders  constitute  three  messes  only,  the 
same  being  altered  and  organized  as  follows  (viz :) 

25 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 


Sergt-  Nathaniel  Pryor 

Privates 
George  Gibson 
George  Shannon 
John  Shields 

}ohn  Collins 
oseph  Whitehouse 
Peter  Wiser 
Peter  Crusat  and 
Francis  Labuche 

Patroon,  Baptist 

Deschamps 

Engages 

Etienne  Mabbauf 
Paul  Primant 
Charles  Hebert 
Baptist  La  Jeunesse 
Peter  Pinant 
Peter  Roi  and 
Joseph  Collin 

Corp1-  Richard 
Warvington 

Privates 
Robert  Frazier 
John  Boleye 
John  Dame 
Ebinezer  Tuttle  and 
Isaac  White 


The  Commanding  Officers  further  direct  that  the 
messes  of  Sergts-  Floyd,  Ordway,  and  Pryor  shall  untill 
further  orders  form  the  crew  of  the  Batteaux ;  the  Mess 
of  the  Patroon  La  Jeunesse  will  form  the  permanent 
crew  of  the  red  Peroque;  Corp1-  Warvington's  men 
forming  that  of  the  white  Peroque. 

26 


Charles  Floyd 

Privates 
Hugh  McNeal 
Patric  Gass 
Reuben  Fields 
John  B.  Thompson 
John  Newman 
Francis  Rivet  and 

(French) 
Joseph  Fields 

Serg*-  j^^  Qrdway 

Privates 

William  Bratton 
John  Collen 

Moses  B.  Reed  (Soldier) 
Alexander  Willard 
William  Warner 
Silas  Goodrich 
John  Potts  and 
Hugh  Hall 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"There  it  all  is,  just  as  Captain  Lewis  wrote 
it,  capitals  and  all.  How  many  would  it  be, 
Rob — not  forgetting  the  two  captains  and  the 
negro  York,  Clark's  body  servant,  who  is  not 
mentioned  in  the  list?" 

"I  make  it  forty-one  names  here  in  the 
messes,"  answered  Rob,  after  counting,  "or 
forty-four  with  the  others  added.  That  does 
not  include  Chaboneau  or  the  Indian  girl,  Sac- 
agawea,  whom  they  took  on  at  Mandan." 

"No,  that's  another  list.  It  usually  is  said 
there  were  forty-five  in  the  party  at  St.  Louis. 
You  see  the  name  'Francis  Rivet  and 
(French)/  That  would  make  forty-five  if 
French  were  a  man  French  and  not  a  French- 
man. But  they  always  spoke  of  the  voyagers 
as  'the  French/  Anyhow,  there's  the  list  of 
May  26,  1804." 

"Maybe  they  lost  a  man  overboard  some- 
where," suggested  John. 

"Not  yet.  They  had  a  deserter  or  two,  but 
that  was  farther  up  the  river,  and  they  caught 
one  of  these  and  gave  him  a  good  military  trim- 
ming and  expulsion,  as  we'll  see  later.  But 
this  I  suppose  we  may  call  the  actual  party  that 
found  our  Great  West  for  us.  They  are  the 
Company  of  Volunteers  for  Northwestern 
Discovery." 

3  27 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

The  three  boys  looked  half  in  awe  as  they 
read  over  the  names  of  these  forgotten  men. 

"Yes.  So  there  they  were,"  resumed  Uncle 
Dick,  gravely.  "And  here  in  the  Journal  the 
very  first  sentence  says  the  party  was  'com- 
posed of  robust,  healthy,  hardy  young  men/ 
Well,  that's  the  sort  I've  got  along  with  me, 
what?" 

"But  Uncle  Dick— Uncle  Dick—"  broke  in 
Jesse,  excitedly,  "your  book  is  all  wrong !  Just 
look  at  the  way  the  spelling  is !  It's  awful.  It 
wasn't  that  way  in  the  copies  we  had." 

"That's  because  this  is  a  real  and  exact  copy 
of  what  they  really  did  write  down,"  said 
Uncle  Dick.  "Yours  must  have  been  one  of 
the  rewritten  and  much-edited  volumes.  To 
my  mind,  that's  a  crime.  Here's  the  real  thing. 

"Listen!"  he  added,  suddenly,  holding  the 
volume  close  to  him.  "Would  you  like  to  know 
something  about  those  two  young  chaps,  Meri- 
wether  Lewis  and  William  Clark,  and  what 
became  of  their  Journals  after  they  got  home? 
You'd  hardly  believe  it." 

"Tell  us,"  said  Rob. 

Uncle  Dick  opened  his  book  on  his  knee,  as 
they  all  sat  on  the  rail  of  the  Adventurer. 

"They  were  soldiers,  both  of  them,  fighting 
men.  Lewis  had  some  education,  and  his  mind 

28 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

was  very  keen.  He  was  the  private  secretary 
of  President  Thomas  Jefferson,  but  Jefferson 
says  he  was  not  'regularly  educated/  He 
studied  some  months  in  astronomy  and  other 
scientific  lines,  under  Mr.  Andrew  Ellicott,  of 
Lancaster,  Pennsylvania,  with  the  special  pur- 
pose of  fitting  himself  to  lead  this  expedition. 
Mr.  Ellicott  had  experience  in  astronomical 
observation,  and  practice  of  it  in  the  woods, 
the  record  says. 

"Lewis  was  better  educated  than  Clark,  who 
was  four  years  the  older — thirty-three — while 
Lewis  was  twenty-nine.  He  spells  better  than 
Clark,  who  is  about  as  funny  as  Josh  Billings, 
though  he  certainly  spelled  his  best.  Of  one 
thing  you  can  be  sure,  whenever  you  see  any- 
thing of  the  Journal  spelled  correctly,  it  is  false 
and  spurious — that's  not  the  original,  for  spell- 
ing was  the  one  thing  those  two  fellows  couldn't 
do. 

"They  used  to  make  field  notes,  rough,  just 
as  you  boys  do.  Clark  had  an  elk-skin  cover 
to  his  book — and  that  .little  book  disappeared 
for  over  one  hundred  years.  It  was  found  in 
the  possession  of  some  distant  relatives,  de- 
scendants, by  name  of  Voorhis,  only  just  about 
ten  years  ago. 

"At  night,  by  the  camp  fire,  the  two  officers 
29 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

would  write  out  their  field  notes,  for  they  had 
to  report  very  fully  to  President  Jefferson. 
Sometimes  one  wrote,  sometimes  the  other,  and 
often  one  would  copy  the  other's  notes.  Only 
the  originals  could  make  all  that  plain.  And, 
alas!  not  all  the  original  work  is  known  to 
exist. 

"No  one  seems  to  have  valued  the  written 
record  of  that  wonderful  trip.  When  the  young 
men  got  to  St.  Louis  on  their  return,  they  did 
try  to  make  a  connected  book  of  it  all,  but  no 
one  valued  that  book,  and  they  couldn't  get  a 
publisher — think  of  that !  But  at  last  they  did 
get  an  editor,  Mr.  Nicholas  Biddle,  he  was,  of 
Philadelphia. 

"That  poor  man  waded  through  over  one 
million  words  of  copy  in  the  'notes'  he  got  hold 
of  at  last!  But  by  then  President  Jefferson 
was  getting  anxious  about  it.  By  then,  too, 
poor  Lewis  was  dead,  and  Clark  was  busy  at 
St.  Louis  as  Indian  agent.  And  Will  Clark 
never  was  a  writer.  So,  slip  by  slip,  the  ma- 
terial faded  and  scattered. 

"Biddle  saved  the  most  of  it,  boiling  it  down 
quite  a  lot.  Then  he  gave  it  over  to  Paul  Allen, 
a  newspaper  man,  also  of  Philadelphia,  who 
did  more  things  to  it,  getting  it  ready  for  the 
press.  This  book  did  not  get  published  until 

30 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

February,  1814,  five  years  after  Lewis  died 
and  eight  years  after  they  got  back.  By  that 
time  a  lot  of  people  had  had  a  hack  at  it.  A 
lot  more  have  had  a  hack  since  then ;  but  Biddle 
is  the  man  who  really  saved  the  day,  and  Allen 
helped  him  very  much. 

"Of  late,  inside  of  the  last  twenty  or  thirty 
years,  many  editions  of  that  great  Journal  have 
been  issued.  The  best  is  the  one  that  holds 
closest  to  Clark's  spelling.  That's  the  best. 
And  I'll  tell  you  it  took  genius,  sometimes,  to 
tell  what  he  meant,  for  that  redhead  spelled  by 
ear. 

"Look  here — and  here.  'Catholic'  he  spells 
'Carthlick' ;  'Loups' — the  Indians — he  calls 
'Loos.'  He  spells  'gnat'  'knat,'  or  spells  'mos- 
quito' 'musquitr,'  and  calls  the  'tow  rope'  the 
'toe  rope' — as  indeed  Lewis  did  also.  He  spells 
'squaw'  as  'squar'  always ;  and  'Sioux'  he  wrote 
down  as  'Cuouex' — which  makes  one  guess  a 
bit — and  the  'Osages'  are  'Osarges/  the  lowas, 
'Ayauways.'  His  men  got  'deesantary'  and 
'turners,'  which  were  'dificcelt  to  cure.'  He 
gives  a  dog  'som  meet,'  and  speaks  of  a  storm 
which  'seased  Instancetaniously/  He  does  a 
lot  of  odd  things  with  big  words  and  little  ones, 
as  spelling  'cedar'  'seeder' — at  least  the  simplest 
way !  As  to  jerked  meat,  I  suppose  it  was  as 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

good  if  spelled  'jurked,'  or  even  'jirked,'  and  a 
'tirkey'  is  as  good  as  turkey,  perhaps. 

"Plain  and  matter-of-fact,  he  was,  that  Red- 
head Chief,  as  the  Indians  called  him ;  yet  very 
little  escaped  him  or  his  friend,  and  both  could 
note  the  beauty  of  nature.  See  here,  where 
Clark  writes  on  June  20th  (his  capitals  are 
odd  as  his  spelling)  :  'at  Sunset  the  atmesphier 
presented  every  appearance  of  wind,  Blue  and 
White  Streeks  centiring  at  the  Sun  as  she  dis- 
appeared and  the  Clouds  Situated  to  the  S.  W. 
Guilded  in  the  most  butiful  manner.' 

"Can't  you  see  the  sunset?  And  can't  you 
see  Will  Clark,  his  tongue  on  one  side,  frown- 
ing as  he  wrote  by  the  firelight  ? 

"And  Lewis  wasn't  so  much  better.  For 
instance,  he  spelled  squirrel  as  'squirril,'  where 
Clark  spells  it  'squarl,'  and  he  spells  hawk 
'balk/  and  hangs  a  'Meadle'  on  a  chief's  neck. 
Oh,  this  old  Journal  certainly  is  a  curious 
thing!" 

Jesse  threw  himself  down  on  the  sand  in  a 
fit  of  laughter.  "I  could  do  better'n  that  my 
own  self,"  said  he,  at  last.  "Why,  what  sort 
of  people  were  they,  couldn't  spell  any  better 
than  that?" 

"Maybe  you  could,"  said  Uncle  Dick,  "but 
you  are  not  to  laugh  at  William  Clark,  who  was 

32 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

a  great  man.  He  did  all  that  writing  after  a 
hard  day's  work,  in  a  wild  and  strange  country. 
I  suppose  it  was  hard  for  him  to  write,  but  he 
did  it,  and  here  it  is. 

"Oddly  enough,  Clark  wrote  a  very  fine, 
clear  hand — a  gentleman's  handwriting.  The 
Journals  are  always  done  in  pen  and  ink.  Clark 
did  most  of  the  work  in  the  Journal,  but  Lewis 
at  times  took  a  hand.  Between  them  they  kept 
what  might  be  called  the  log  of  the  voyage. 

"They  worked,  all  of  that  party.  The  oars- 
men had  to  work  under  a  taskmaster  all  day. 
Some  one  had  to  hunt,  for  they  only  had  about 
a  ton  of  cargo,  all  told,  and  they  only  had  $2,500 
to  spend  for  the  whole  trip  out  and  back,  and 
to  feed  forty  people  two  years.  And  at  night 
the  commanders  made  Gass  and  Ordway  and 
Floyd  and  Whitehouse  keep  journals,  too ;  and 
Pryor  and  Frazier  did  a  bit  of  the  same,  like 
enough.  They  had  to  cover  everything  they 
saw. 

"So  that  is  how  we  got  this  wonderful  Jour- 
nal, boys — one  of  the  simplest  and  most  manly 
books  ever  written.  As  I  said,  it  was  long  for- 
gotten and  came  near  being  ruined. 

"The  book  of  Patrick  Gass  got  out  first,  and 
it  had  many  publishers  on  both  sides  the  ocean 
— though,  of  course,  it  had  to  be  rewritten  a 

33 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

great  deal.  Up  to  1851  there  had  been  fifteen 
real  and  fake  Lewis  and  Clark  books  printed, 
in  English,  French,  and  German ;  and  there  are 
about  a  dozen  books  with  Sergeant  Patrick 
Gass  as  the  'author.' 

"They  had  no  cameras  in  those  days,  but 
those  men  brought  out  exact  word  pictures  of 
that  land  and  its  creature  inhabitants.  The 
spelling  we  must  forget — that  day  was  differ- 
ent and  schools  were  rare.  But  good  minds 
and  bodies  they  surely  had.  They  were  not 
traders  or  trappers — they  were  explorers  and 
adventurers  in  every  sense  of  the  word,  and 
gentlemen  as  well. 

"But  now,"  concluded  Uncle  Dick,  "that'll 
do  for  the  story  of  the  Journal.  We've  got  it 
with  us,  and  will  use  it  right  along.  We're 
all  ready,  now?  Well,  let's  be  off,  for  now  I 
see  the  wind  is  with  us,  and  it's  even  more  than 
William  Clark  started  with  when  his  three 
boats  left  the  Wood  River  and  started  up  the 
Missouri.  He  said  they  had  a  'jentle  brease/ 

"Off  we  go — on  the  greatest  waterway  in  all 
the  world,  and  on  the  trail  of  the  greatest  ex- 
plorers the  world  has  ever  known." 

"Now  then,"  commanded  Rob,  laying  hold 
of  the  rail.  "Heave— o!"  The  others  also 
pushed.  The  good  ship  Adventurer  swung  free 

34 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

of  the  sand  and  lay  afloat.  They  sprang  in. 
Uncle  Dick  steadied  her  with  the  oars.  Jesse 
and  John  went  ahead  to  trim  ship.  Rob  gave  a 
couple  of  turns  to  the  flywheels  of  the  two 
outboard  motors  and  adjusted  his  feet  to  the 
special  steering  gear.  The  doubled  motors  be- 
gan their  busy  sput-sput-sput !  Like  a  thing 
of  life  the  long  craft,  Adventurer,  of  America, 
turned  into  the  current  of  the  great  Missouri, 
the  echoes  of  the  energetic  little  engines  echo- 
ing far  and  wide. 


CHAPTER  V 

OFF  UP  THE  RIVER 

SHE'S  riding  fine,  sir,"  called  Rob  to  Uncle 
Dick,  over  the  noise  of  the  two  little  pro- 
pellers that  kept  the  gunwales  trembling.     "I 
can  head  her  square  into  the  mid  current  and 
buck  her  through !" 

Uncle  Dick  smiled  and  nodded.  "It's  going 
to  be  all  right !  She  rides  like  a  duck.  Spread 
that  foresail,  Frank,  you  and  Jesse.  We'll  do 
our  six  miles  an  hour,  sure  as  shooting !  Haul 
that  foresail  squarer,  Jesse,  so  she  won't  spill 
the  wind.  Now,  Rob,  keep  her  dead  ahead." 

"How  far  did  they  go  each  day?"  demanded 
Jesse,  "and  how  often  did  they  eat?" 

They  all  broke  out  in  a  roar  of  laughter  over 
Jesse's  appetite. 

"They  ate  when  they  could,"  answered  Uncle 
Dick,  "for  they  had  their  hands  full,  working 
that  big  scow  upstream.  She  was  loaded  heavy, 
and  they  often  had  to  drag  her  on  the  line. 
When  the  line  broke,  as  it  did  several  times, 
she'd  swing  into  the  current  and  there'd  be 
trouble  to  pay. 

36 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"How  far  did  they  go?  Well,  that's  really 
hard  to  say.  They  usually  set  down  the  courses 
and  distances  on  the  bends.  For  instance,  here 
is  the  first  record  of  that  sort,  May  15th.  'S6' 
means  starboard,  right  hand  side  going  up,  and 
'L6'  means  larboard,  to  the  left." 

"Course  and  Distance  assending  the  Missourie  Tues- 
day May  15. 

Course  Mls 

West  1-0—  To  p*  on  S*  Side 

N  80°W  2-0—  -  "  "  "  "  " 

N  11°W  2-4—  "  "  "  "  " 

N  20°W  H—  "  "  "  LM  " 

S  10°W  H—  "  "  "  S*  " 

S  22°W  1-0—  "  "  "  "  " 


"We'll  not  try  to  keep  our  own  courses,  and 
we'll  have  to  guess  at  our  distances  except  as 
we  can  estimate  it  from  average  speed,  which 
is  what  they  also  did.  I  suppose  it  seemed  a 
long  way.  Patrick  Gass  says  it  was  three  thou- 
sand and  ninety-six  miles  to  the  head  of  the 
river.  Anyhow,  they  didn't  make  it  as  soon  as 
we  shall." 

They  ran  on  steadily,  both  motors  firing  per- 
fectly and  the  sun  bright  overhead,  while  the 
fresh  breeze  back  of  them  still  held  fair  for 
most  of  the  bends.  They  made  St.  Charles  by 

37 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

noon,  as  had  been  predicted,  but  did  not  pause, 
eating  their  lunch  aboard  as  they  traveled. 

"Our  captains  didn't  do  this,"  said  Rob.  "As 
near  as  I  can  learn,  they  camped  and  cooked 
on  shore.  And  they  certainly  got  plenty  of 
game/' 

"I  know !"  said  Jesse,  his  mouth  full  of  bread 
and  marmalade.  "Deer  and  turkey  all  along  in 
here,  then." 

"Sure!"  added  John.  "Thirty  deer,  four 
bear,  and  two  wolves  in  the  first  six  weeks." 

Uncle  Dick  sighed.  "Well,  we'll  have  to 
live  on  rolls  and  marmalade,  and  if  Jesse's  ap- 
petite holds  we'll  have  to  make  a  good  many 
towns  for  supplies.  More's  the  pity,  there's  a 
good  town  now  about  every  ten  miles  or  so — 
two  dozen  towns  in  the  first  two  hundred  and 
fifty  miles." 

"Aw  now !"  said  Jesse.  "Aw  now !  I  guess 
a  fellow  can't  help  getting  hungry.  Maybe  we 
can  catch  some  fish,  anyhow." 

"Gass  said  they  did,"  nodded  John.  "They 
got  a  lot  of  fine  catfish,  and  I  think  Patrick 
Gass  must  have  liked  them,  way  he  talks.  He 
says,  We  are  generally  well  supplied  with  cat- 
fish, the  best  I  have  ever  seen/  ' 

"What  kind  of  a  grub  list  did  they  have?" 
inquired  Jesse;  and  John  was  able  to  answer, 

38 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

for  he  found  the  page  in  the  Journal,  which 
was  close  at  hand  on  a  box  top,  so  it  could  be 
consulted  at  any  time. 

"They  didn't  have  any  marmalade  or  pre- 
serves, or  fruit  or  acid  of  any  kind,  and  they 
must  have  relied  on  the  hunt.  They  had  four 
bags  of  'parchmeal,'  which  I  suppose  was 
parched  corn  ground — the  old  frontier  ration, 
you  know.  That  was  about  twenty-eight  bush- 
els in  all,  with  some  eighteen  bushels  of  'com- 
mon' and  twenty-two  bushels  of  hominy.  Then 
they  had  thirty  half  barrels  of  flour,  and  a 
dozen  barrels  of  biscuit,  a  barrel  of  meal,  fifty 
bushels  of  meal,  twenty-four  bushels  of  Nat- 
chez hulled  corn,  four  barrels  of  other  hulled 
corn,  and  one  of  meal.  That  was  their  cereal 
list. 

"They  only  had  one  bag  of  coffee,  and  one 
each  of  'Beens  &  pees/  as  Clark  spells  them, 
and  only  two  bags  of  sugar,  though  eight  hun- 
dred and  seventy  pounds  of  salt." 

"Not  much  sweets,"  grumbled  Jesse.  "How 
about  the  grease  list  ?"  Jesse  was  rather  wise 
about  making  up  a  good,  well-balanced  grub 
list  for  a  camping  trip. 

"Well,"  answered  John,  "they  had  forty-five 
hundred  pounds  of  pork,  a  keg  of  lard,  and 
six  hundred  pounds  of  Agrees/  as  he  calls  it. 

39 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

Not  so  much;  and  they  ran  out  of  salt  in  a 
year,  and  out  of  flour,  too,  so  they  didn't  have 
any  bread  for  months.  They  had  some  stuff 
spoiled  by  getting  wet." 

"They  had  some  trade  stuff  for  the  Indians, 
and  tools  of  all  sorts,  and  other  weapons  and 
ammunition.  They  had  sun  glasses  and  an  air 
gun  and  instruments  for  latitude  and  longitude. 
They  were  travelers,  all  right." 

"Lay  her  a  half  north,  fifty-seven  degrees 
west,  and  full  steam  ahead!"  sang  out  Uncle 
Dick.  "Cut  this  big  bend  and  take  the  wind  on 
the  labbord  quarter,  Jesse.  I'll  promise  you, 
if  our  gas  holds  out,  we'll  get  somewhere  be- 
fore dark.  The  Adventurer,  of  America  is  a 
mile  eater,  believe  me!" 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  LOG  OF  THE   "ADVENTURER" 


thing  sure/'  said  Rob,  after  a  long 
silence,  toward  the  close  of  the  after- 
noon, "this  isn't  any  wilderness  now.  Look  at 
the  fields  and  settlements  we've  passed.  There's 
a  town  every  ten  miles." 

"Well,  I  don't  think  it  was  all  wild,  even 
when  Lewis  and  Clark  went  through,"  John 
replied  to  him.  "People  had  been  all  through 
here.  The  Journal  keeps  on  mentioning  this 
creek  and  that  —  all  the  names  were  already  on 
the  country." 

"Shall  we  get  as  far  as  Charette  to-day, 
Uncle  Dick?"  asked  Jesse. 

"Hardly,  this  country  has  changed  a  lot  in  a 
hundred  years  and  I  don't  know  just  where  we 
are.    I'm  only  guessing,  doing  dead  reckoning 
on  our  motor  speed.    But  we  ought  to  see  the 
place  I've  got  in  mind,  before  plumb  dark." 
"See  what,  Uncle  Dick?    What  is  it?" 
"Never  mind.    I'll  tell  you  if  we  make  it." 
However,  Uncle  Dick  was  shrewd  in  his  map 
work  and  his  guessing.    Toward  dark  the  boys 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

began  to  get  anxious  as  the  shadows  fell  along 
the  deep,  powerful  river,  but  they  had  no  sign 
to  land  until  it  was  well  after  sunset.  Then 
Uncle  Dick  began  to  whistle  cheerfully. 

"All  right,  Rob,"  he  called.  "Hard  a-lee! 
Get  across.  That  creek  on  the  right  is  the 
Femme  Osage.  There  were  forty  families 
settled  there,  six  miles  up  the  river,  and  one  of 
those  farmers  was — who  do  you  think?" 

"I  know !"  exclaimed  John.  "It  was  Daniel 
Boone!  I've  read  about  his  moving  in  here 
from  Kentucky." 

"Right  you  are,  son!  He  had  a  Spanish 
land  grant  in  here  and  lived  here  till  1804.  He 
died  in  1820,  at  the  town  called  Femme  Osage, 
as  you  know. 

"Well  now,  here  we  are !  In  under  the  rocks, 
Rob — so !  Now  quick,  Jesse,  make  fast  at  the 
bow!" 

"Well,  what  do  you  know !"  exclaimed  Jesse. 
"Regular  cave,  and  everything !" 

"Yes,"  smiled  his  uncle,  "a  regular  cave  and 
all.  Lucky  to  hit  it  so  well  and  to  find  it  still 
doing  business — at  least  part  way — after  a  hun- 
dred years !" 

They  scrambled  up  the  bank  to  the  opening 
of  the  cavern  which  made  back  into  the  bold 
rocky  shore,  finding  the  interior  about  twelve 

42 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

feet  wide  and  running  back  for  forty  feet, 
with  a  height  of  some  twenty  feet.  It  was 
blackened  with  smoke  in  places,  and  many 
names  were  cut  in  the  rock. 

"Hard  run  up  the  swift  chutes  to  get  here," 
said  Uncle  Dick,  "but  I'm  glad  we  made  it. 
This  old  cave  was  called  the  Tavern/  even 
before  Lewis  and  Clark,  and  all  the  river  men 
used  to  stop  here.  Quite  homey,  eh? 

"We  are  lucky  to  have  done  in  a  day  what 
it  took  Lewis  and  Clark  nine  hard  days  to  do. 
They  made  only  nine  miles  the  last  day,  and 
found  the  water  'excessively  swift/  Well,  so 
did  we ;  but  here  we  are/' 

With  the  swiftness  born  of  many  nights  in 
camp  together,  the  four  now  unpacked  the 
needful  articles,  not  putting  up  any  tent,  but 
spreading  it  down  on  the  floor  of  the  cave. 
Their  fire  lit  up  the  rocks  in  a  wild  and  pictur- 
esque manner  as  they  sat  near,  cooking  and  eat- 
ing their  first  meal  of  the  actual  voyage  up  the 
great  Missouri. 

"They  got  a  deer  that  day/'  said  Rob,  poring 
over  the  Journal,  "I  expect  about  their  first 
deer/' 

Rob  was  turning  over  the  pages  on  ahead. 
"Hah !"  said  he.  "The  men  didn't  always  take 
care  of  the  grub ;  here  it  says,  'Lyed  corn  and 
4  43 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

Grece  will  be  issued,  the  next  day  Poark  and 
flour,  and  the  following,  Indian  meal  and 
Poark,  according  to  this  Rotiene  till  further 
orders.  No  Poark  will  be  issued  when  we  have 
fresh  meat  on  hand !'  " 

"You  listen,  now,  Jesse.  With  breakfast 
bacon  at  sixty  cents  a  pound,  and  your  appe- 
tite, we'll  have  to  go  after  meat.  Get  out 
that  throw  line  of  yours  and  see  if  we  can't 
hang  a  catfish  by  morning.  Here's  a  piece  of 
beef  for  bait." 

Jesse  scrambled  down  the  shore  and  threw 
out  his  line,  with  a  rock  for  sinker,  while  the 
others  finished  making  ready  the  beds. 

"Jolly  old  place,"  ventured  John,  "though  a 
little  hard  for  a  bed.  What  you  looking  at, 
Rob?" 

"I  was  trying  to  find  if  the  old  Indian  images 
were  left,  that  used  to  be  scratched  or  painted 
on  the  walls.  Clark  says  the  voyageurs  and 
Indians  were  superstitious  about  this  place.  I 
think  caves  are  always  spooky  places." 

Soon  they  all  felt  tired  and  began  to  unroll 
the  beds.  A  screech  owl  made  a  tremulous, 
eerie  note,  but  even  Jesse  only  laughed  at  that. 

They  had  breakfast  before  the  mist  was  off 
the  water,  and  before  the  cooking  was  begun 
Jesse  called  out  from  below : 

44 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"Hey,  there!  Wait  for  me!  I've  got  the 
breakfast  right  here!  Call  in  the  lyed  corn 
and  pork.  Here's  a  catfish,  four  pounds,  any- 
how!" 

"Clean  him,  Jess,"  called  Rob,  "and  cut  him 
up  small  enough  to  fry." 

Jesse  did  so,  and  soon  the  slices  were  sizzling 
in  the  pan. 

"Well,  anyhow,"  commented  their  leader, 
"though  not  as  good  as  venison,  it's  wild  game, 
eh  ?  And  our  way  has  always  been  to  live  off 
the  country  all  we  could  without  breaking 
laws." 

"What  changes,  from  then  till  now!"  said 
Rob.  "It  was  spring  and  summer  when  they 
went  up  this  river,  but  they  killed  deer,  turkeys, 
elk,  buffalo,  antelope,  and  wild  fowl — hundreds 
— all  the  time.  Now,  all  that's  unlawful." 

"And  impossible.  Yes,  they  lived  as  the 
Indians  lived,  and  they  killed  game  the  year 
round.  Now,  about  all  we  can  do  for  a  while 
will  be  to  eat  the  trusty  catfish." 

"One  thing  has  not  changed/'  their  leader 
added,  a;  little  later,  "and  that  is  the  current 
along  the  rock  faces.  Just  above  is  what  Clark 
called  'The  Deavels  face  ground5 — a  half  mile 
that  will  try  your  motors,  Rob.  The  big  keel 
boat  got  in  all  sorts  of  trouble  that  day,  whirl- 

45 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

ing  around,  getting  on  bars,  breaking  her  line 
and  all  that.  The  expedition  came  near  getting 
into  grief — men  had  to  go  overboard  and 
steady  her,  and  they  were  swimming,  poling, 
rowing,  and  tracking  all  that  day." 

Indeed,  the  great  river  seemed  disposed  to 
show  the  young  travelers  that  her  prowess  had 
not  diminished.  They  had  a  hard  fight  that 
day  in  more  than  one  fast  chute,  and  twice 
dragged  the  propellers  on  bars  which  they  did 
not  see  at  all.  Uncle  Dick  used  the  oars  three 
or  four  hours  that  day,  and  Jesse,  the  boatman, 
spread  his  foresail  to  gain  such  added  power 
as  was  possible.  In  this  way  they  made  very 
good  time,  so  that  by  late  evening  they  reached 
the  mouth  of  the  Gasconade,  which  comes  in 
from  the  left  from  the  hill  country.  They 
got  a  good  camp  near  the  mouth,  with  abun- 
dance of  wood.  Jesse  was  so  lucky  as  to  take 
two  fine  wall-eyed  pike,  here  called  jack  salmon, 
on  his  set  line,  as  well  as  two  catfish.  They 
let  the  latter  go,  as  they  had  enough  for  the 
day,  the  wall-eyes  proving  excellent. 

"Now  we're  beginning  to  get  into  deer!" 
said  Rob.  "Here  George  Shannon  killed  a 
deer,  and  Reuben  Fields  got  one  the  next  day. 
And  all  the  time,  as  you  no  doubt  remember, 
we've  been  meeting  canoes  coming  down  from 

46 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

the  Omahas  and  Osages  and  Pawnees  and 
Kansas,  loaded  down  with  furs!" 

"I  remember  perfectly/'  asserted  John,  sol- 
emnly. I  can  see  them  going  by  right  now! 
Pretty  soon  we  pick  up  old  man  Dorion,  com- 
ing down  from  the  Sioux,  and  hire  him  to  go 
back  as  an  interpreter  for  us." 

"Could  catch  a  lot  of  catfish  and  'jurk'  the 
meat,  the  way  Captain  Clark  did  venison," 
said  Jesse,  at  length. 

According  to  their  usual  custom  when  on  the 
trail,  they  were  off  by  sunup,  the  exhaust  of 
the  double  motors  making  the  wooded  shore 
echo  again.  They  made  their  third  encamp- 
ment at  the  mouth  of  a  stream  which  they  took 
to  be  that  called  Good  Woman  River  in  the  Jour- 
nal— a  name  no  longer  known  on  their  map. 

"Whew !"  complained  Uncle  Dick,  as  he  got 
out  and  stretched  his  legs.  "This  is  cramping 
me  as  bad  as  the  trenches  in  the  Argonne.  You 
fellows'll  'do  me  in/  as  the  British  used  to  say, 
if  I  don't  look  out!  How  far  do  you  think 
we've  come  in  the  three  days,  Rob?" 

"Let's  see.  I  figure  about  one  hundred  and 
ninety  to  two  hundred  miles,  that's  all !  What 
Lewis  and  Clark  needed  was  our  boat  and  a 
few  outboard  kickers.  It  took  them  till  June 
7th,  twenty-three  days,  to  get  to  this  point. 

47 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

We've  gained,  you  might  say,  three  weeks  on 
their  time." 

"Yes,  but  they  got  three  bears  at  this  camp, 
and  we've  got  nothing !  We  don't  dare  kill  even 
a  squirrel,  though  I'm  sure  we  could  get  some 
sort  of  game  in  this  rough  country  not  far 
back."  John  spoke  ruefully. 

"Don't  kick,  John,"  advised  Jesse,  sagely. 
"I'll  take  care  of  you.  Besides,  look  at  the  big 
help  the  wind  was  to-day.  Clark  says  he  had 
only  a  'jentle  breese'  in  here." 

"Or  words  to  that  effect,"  smiled  Rob.  "The 
main  thing  is,  we  travel  many  times  faster 
than  they  possibly  could.  Even  so,  she's  a 
long  trail  ahead." 

"All  we  know  is  that  we'll  get  through!" 
said  John.  "We  always  have." 

"We're  discovering  romance,"  said  Uncle 
Dick.  "We're  discovering  America,  too. 
Jesse,  take  down  your  Flag  from  the  bow  staff 
— don't  you  know  the  Flag  must  never  be 
allowed  to  fly  after  sunset?" 

They  were  now  lying  in  their  blankets  in 
their  tent,  on  a  wind-swept  point.  "I  wonder  if 
Captain  Clark  took  down  the  flag.  Now,  I 
wonder " 

But  what  Jesse  wondered  was  lost,  for  soon 
he  was  asleep. 

48 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  GATE  OF  THE  WEST 

NEARLY  a  week  had  passed  since  the  last 
recorded  camp  of  the  crew  of  the  Adven- 
turer— spent  in  steady  progress  across  the  great 
and  beautiful  state  of  Missouri  and  its  rich 
bottom  lands,  its  many  towns,  its  farms  and 
timber  lands  and  prairies.  Many  an  exclama- 
tion at  the  wild  beauty  of  some  passing  scene 
had  been  theirs  in  the  constant  succession  of 
changing  river  landscapes. 

Their  own  adventures  they  had  had,  too, 
with  snags  and  sweepers  and  the  dreaded  "roll- 
ing sands"  over  which  the  current  boiled  and 
hissed  ominously ;  but  the  handlers  of  the  boat 
were  well  used  to  bad  water  on  their  earlier 
trips  together,  in  the  upper  wildernesses  of  the 
continent,  so  they  made  light  of  these  matters. 

"I  don't  believe  that  Patrick  Gass  put  down 
all  the  bears  they  got/'  said  Jesse.  "Clark  says 
they  got  a  lot,  sometimes  two  a  day,  and  they 
'jurked'  the  meat,  the  same  as  vension.  Gee! 
I  wish  I'd  been  along !" 

Rob  smiled.  "I  expect  the  hunters  had  a 
49 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

hard  time  enough.  They  had  to  work  through 
heavy  weeds  and  vines  in  these  bottoms,  and  if 
they  got  back  in  very  far  they  had  to  guess 
where  the  boat  would  be.  And  even  Lewis 
complains  of  ticks  and  mosquitoes  and  heavy 
going  ashore." 

"I  believe  things  poisoned  Clark  worse  than 
they  did  Lewis,  he  was  so  fair  skinned,"  said 
John.  "One  of  his  regular  entries  all  along 
was,  'Mosquitrs  (or  musketos  or  muskeeters) 
very  troublesome/  ' 

"Poor  Clark !"  smiled  Rob.  "What  with  rub- 
bing 'musquitr'  bites  and  spelling  in  his  daily 
report,  he  must  have  had  a  hard  time.  He  had 
another  regular  entry,  too,  as  you  said,  Jesse, 
that  about  the  'jentle  brease.'  I  don't  know 
how  many  ways  he  spelled  it,  but  he  seems  to 
have  had  no  confidence  at  all  in  his  own  spell- 
ing. Look  here:  on  June  1st  he  has  a  'jentle 
brease/  and  on  June  20th  a  'jentle  breese';  but 
not  content  when  he  got  it  right,  he  calls  it  a 
'gentle  Breeze'  the  next  time,  then  drops  back 
to  'gentle  breeze'  on  July  21st.  He  repeats  that 
on  August  12th,  the  next  raising  it  to  'gentle 
Breeze' ;  and  then  it's  a  'gentle  breeze,'  a  'jentle 
Breeze,'  'gentle  breeze,'  and  'gentle  Brease' — 
till  he  gets  perfectly  irresponsible,  up  the 
river!" 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"What  a  funny  man !"  snickered  Jesse,  once 
more. 

"He  didn't  do  it  to  be  funny,"  said  Rob. 
"Once  I  asked  a  kid  cow  puncher  to  make  a 
horse  pitch  some  more  for  me,  so  I  could  make 
a  photo  of  it ;  and  he  said,  'Why,  I  didn't  make 
him  pitch — he  just  done  that  hisself .'  Well,  I 
guess  that's  how  to  account  for  Clark's  spell- 
ing— he  'just  done  that  hisself.'  " 

Uncle  Dick  had  not  been  paying  much  atten- 
tion to  the  boys  just  then,  but  was  watching  the 
smoke  clouds  ahead.  Passing  trains  whistled 
loudly  and  frequently.  The  shores  became 
more  populated. 

"Two  miles  more  and  we'll  round  to  full  view 
of  Kansas  City,  young  men,"  said  he.  "We've 
crossed  the  whole  and  entire  state  of  Missouri, 
three  hundred  and  ninety  miles — from  one 
great  city  to  another  great  one. 

"St.  Louis— -Kansas  City !  Each  in  her  day 
has  been  the  Gate  to  the  West.  In  1847,  Inde- 
pendence, over  to  the  left,  was  going  back,  and 
even  the  new  boat  landing  of  Westport  was 
within  the  year  to  be  called  Kansas  City.  Then 
she  was  the  Gate  indeed,  and  so  she  has  re- 
mained through  various  later  sorts  of  trans- 
portation. 

"When  St.  Louis  laid  down  the  oar  and 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

paddle,  Kansas  City  took  up  the  ox  whip. 
When  the  railroads  came,  she  was  sitting  on 
the  job. 

"You've  seen  one  old  town  site  of  New 
Franklin,  opposite  Boonville,  halfway  across 
the  state;  and  now  I  want  you  to  study  this 
great  city  here,  hardly  more  than  threescore 
years  and  ten  of  age — just  a  man's  lifetime. 
Picture  this  place  as  it  then  was — full  of  the 
ox  teams  going  west " 

"Oh,  can't  we  go  over  the  Oregon  Trail,  too 
— next  year,  Uncle  Dick?"  broke  in  John. 

"Maybe.  Don't  ask  me  too  many  questions 
too  far  ahead.  Now,  think  back  to  the  time  of 
Lewis  and  Clark — not  a  settlement  or  a  house 
of  a  white  man  above  La  Charette,  and  not  one 
here.  To  them  this  was  just  the  mouth  of  the 
Kansas,  or  'Kansau/  River,  and  little  enough 
could  they  learn  about  that  river.  Look  at  the 
big  bluffs  and  the  trees.  And  yonder  were  the 
Prairies ;  and  back  of  them  the  Plains.  No  one 
knew  them  then. 

"As  you  know,  they  had  been  getting  more 
and  more  game  as  they  approached  this  place. 
Now  the  deer  and  bears  and  turkeys  fairly 
thronged.  Patrick  Gass  says,  'I  never  saw  so 
much  sign  of  game  in  my  life/  and  the  Journals 
tell  of  the  abundance  of  game  killed — Clark 

52 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

speaks  of  the  deer  killed  the  day  they  got  here, 
June  26th,  and  says,  'I  observed  a  great  number 
of  Parrot  quetts  this  evening/  That  Carolina 
parrakeet  is  mentioned  almost  all  the  way 
across  Kansas  by  the  Oregon  Trail  men,  and 
it  used  to  be  thick  in  middle  Illinois.  All  gone 
now — gone  with  many  another  species  of 
American  wild  life — gone  with  the  bears  and 
turkeys  and  deer  we  didn't  see.  You  couldn't 
find  a  parrakeet  at  the  mouth  of  the  'Kanzas' 
River  to-day,  unless  you  bought  it  in  a  bird 
store,  that's  sure. 

"But  think  of  the  giant  trees  in  here,  those 
days — sycamores,  cottonwoods,  as  well  as  oaks 
and  ash  and  hickories  and  elms  and  mulberries 
and  maples.  And  the  grass  tall  as  a  man's 
waist,  and  'leavel,'  as  they  called  it.  Is  it  any 
wonder  that  Will  Clark  got  worked  up  over 
some  of  the  views  he  saw  from  high  points  on 
the  river  bends?  Those,  my  boys,  were  the 
happy  days — oh,  I  confess,  Jesse,  many  a  time 
I've  wished  I'd  been  there  my  own  self !" 

"How  do  you  check  up  on  the  distances  with 
Clark?  How  long  did  it  take  them  to  get  this 
far?" 

"Just  forty-three  days,  sir,"  replied  Jesse, 
the  youngest  of  them  all,  who  also  had  been 
keeping  count. 

53 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"Yes — around  seven  miles  a  day!  We've 
done  seven  miles  an  hour,  many  a  time.  Where 
they  took  a  week  we'll  take  a  day,  let  us  say. 
From  here  to  Mandan,  North  Dakota,  where 
they  wintered,  is  more  than  fourteen  hundred 
miles  by  river,  and  they  took  about  one  hundred 
and  twenty  days  to  it — averaging  only  nine  and 
a  half  or  ten  miles  a  day  of  actual  travel  in 
that  part  of  the  river.  Clark  fails  once  or 
twice  to  log  the  day's  distance.  Gass  calls  it 
sixteen  hundred  and  ten  miles  from  the  start  to 
Mandan — I  make  it  about  fifteen  hundred  and 
fifty,  with  such  figures  as  I  find  set  down.  The 
River  Commission  call  it  fourteen  hundred  and 
fifty-two.  Give  us  fifty  miles  a  day  for  thirty 
days,  and  that  would  be  fifteen  hundred  miles — 
why,  we're  a  couple  of  hundred  miles  beyond 
Mandan  right  now — on  paper! 

"But  I  never  saw  anything  that  ran  by  gas 
that  didn't  get  its  back  up  sometimes.  Sup- 
pose we  allow  a  month  to  get  up  to  Mandan — 
bringing  us  there  by  June  22d — call  it  June 
30th.  How'd  that  do?  Do  you  think  we  can 
make  it — say  forty-odd  miles  a  day — or  even 
thirty?" 

"Sure  we  can !"  said  Jesse,  stoutly. 

"Yes — on  paper!"  repeated  Uncle  Dick. 
"Well,  there's  many  a  sand  bar  between  here 

54 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

and  Mandan,  and  many  a  long  mile.  Lewis 
and  Clark  did  not  get  there  until  October  26th 
— four  months  from  here.  If  we  allow  our- 
selves one  month,  we'll  only  have  to  go  four  or 
five  times  as  fast  as  they  did.  I've  known  a 
flat  bottom  'John  boat'  do  forty  miles  a  day  on 
the  Current  River  of  Missouri  with  only  one 
outboard  motor ;  and  that's  a  six-mile  current, 
good  and  stiff.  Let  us  not  count  our  chickens 
just  yet,  but  keep  on  plugging.  I  must  say  Rob 
is  a  wizard  with  the  engines,  this  far,  at  least. 

"And  now,  if  we're  done  with  the  arith- 
metic   " 

"We're  not,"  interrupted  Jesse.  "I've  set 
down  the  fish  I've  caught  this  far,  and  it's  three 
wall-eyes  and  twelve  catfish.  That's  fifteen 
head  of  game  against  their  thirty,  about !" 

"Oh !  And  you  want  to  know,  if  a  boy  of 
your  size  could  catch  fifteen  head  of  fish  in 
eight  days,  how  many  could  we  all  catch  in 
thirty  days?  That's  getting  out  of  my  depth, 
Jesse !  I  don't  know,  but  I  hope  that  the  gaso- 
line and  the  catfish  both  hold  out,  for  they  are 
our  main  staffs  of  life  just  now." 

They  ran  up  the  left  bluff  of  the  river,  mile 
after  mile,  under  the  edge  of  the  great  town 
whose  chimneys  belched  black  smoke,  noting 
railway  train  after  train,  their  own  impudent 

55 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

little  motors  making  as  much  noise  as  the  next 
along  the  water  front.  Many  a  head  was 
turned  to  catch  sight  of  their  curious  twin- 
screw  craft,  with  the  flag  at  its  bow,  and  on  the 
stern  the  name  Adventurer,  of  America,  but 
Rob  paid  no  attention  to  this,  holding  her  stiff 
into  the  current  and  heading  in  answer  to  Uncle 
Dick's  signals. 

At  last  they  lay  alongside  a  little  landing  to 
which  a  houseboat  was  moored,  occupied  by  a 
riverman  whom  Uncle  Dick  seemed  to  know. 

"How  do  you  do,  Johnson,"  said  he,  as  the 
man  poked  his  head  out  of  the  companionway. 
"You  see  we're  here." 

"And  more'n  I'd  of  bet  on,  at  that !"  rejoined 
the  other.  "I  never  expected  ye  could  make  it 
up  at  all.  How  long  ye  been — a  month  or  so?" 

"A  week  or  so,"  replied  Uncle  Dick,  care- 
lessly, and  not  showing  his  pride  in  the  per- 
formance of  the  party.  "You  see,  we've  got 
double  engines  and  we  travel  under  forced 
draught,  with  the  stokers  stripped  to  the  waist 
and  doing  eight  shifts  a  day." 

"Like  enough,  like  enough!"  laughed  John- 
son, not  crediting  their  run.  "Well,  what  kin 
I  do  fer  ye  here?" 

"Get  our  tanks  filled.  Unpack  our  boat  and 
store  the  stuff  on  your  boat  so  it  can't  be  stolen. 

56 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

Overrun  our  engines  and  oil  her  up.  Clean  out 
the  bilge  and  make  her  a  sweet  ship." 

"When?" 

"To-day.  But  we'll  not  start  until  to-morrow 
morning.  I've  got  a  few  friends  to  see  here, 
and  my  Company  of  Volunteers  for  North- 
western Discovery  will  like  to  look  around  a 
little.  We'll  stop  at  a  hotel  to-night.  I'm  trust- 
ing you  to  have  everything  ready  for  us  by  nine 
to-morrow  morning." 

"That's  all  right,"  replied  Johnson.  "I'll  not 
fail  ye,  and  I'll  not  let  anything  git  losted, 
neither." 

"I  know  that,"  said  Uncle  Dick.  "By  the 
way,  Johnson,  which  is  the  best  outfitting  store 
in  Westport?" 

"As  which,  sir?" 

"In  Westport,  or  say  Independence.  We 
could  walk  down  there  if  we  had  to.  Not  so 
far." 

Old  Johnson  scratched  his  head.  "Go  on, 
Colonel,  you're  always  havin'  yer  joke.  I'm 
sure  I  don't  know  what  ye  mean  by  Indypend- 
ence,  or  Westport.  But  if  you  want  to  get  up- 
town, the  street  cars  is  four  blocks  yan.  Er 
maybe  ye'd  like  a  taxi?" 

"No,  nothing  that  goes  by  gas,  for  one  day, 
anyhow,  Johnson.  Well,  see  to  the  things — 

57 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

the  crew  have  got  the  batteau  about  unloaded, 
and  it's  about  time  for  our  mess  to  go  ashore 
to  the  cook  fire.  Sergeant  Mclntyre,  issue  the 
lyed  corn  with  the  bear  and  vension  stew  to- 
night, and  see  that  my  ink  horn  and  traveling 
desk  are  at  hand !" 

"Yes,  sir,  very  good  sir!"  returned  Rob, 
gravely.  And  without  a  smile  the  four  stalked 
off  up  the  stair,  leaving  Johnson  to  wonder 
what  in  the  world  they  meant. 


u 


CHAPTER  VIII 
HO!  FOR  THE  PLATTE! 

NCLE  DICK  excused  himself  from  the 
party  for  a  time  in  the  evening,  having 
some  business  to  attend  to.  He  left  the  three 
boys  in  their  room  at  a  hotel,  declaring  they  all 
would  rather  sleep  on  the  houseboat  with 
Johnson. 

"It's  mighty  quiet  on  this  trip,"  said  Jesse. 

"Nothing  happens?"  said  Rob,  looking  up 
from  his  maps  and  the  Journal  which  he  had 
spread  on  the  table.  "That's  what  the  explor- 
ers thought  when  they  got  here !  They  wanted 
to  start  in  killing  buffalo,  but  there  were  no 
buffalo  so  close  to  the  river  even  then.  All  our 
hunters  got  was  deer ;  they  lay  here  a  couple  of 
days  and  got  plenty  of  deer,  and  did  some  tan- 
ning and  'jurking.'  Clark  says  they  took  this 
chance  to  compare  their  'instrimunts,'  and  also 
they  'suned  their  powder  and  wollen  articles.' 

"Clark  killed  a  deer  below  here.    Drewyer, 
one  of  the  best  hunters,  had  a  fat  bear  and  a 
deer,  too.    And  Lewis  killed  a  deer  next  day, 
so  the  party  was  in  'fine  Sperrits.' ' 
5  59 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"Oh,  so  would  I  be  in  fine  'sperrits'  if  I 
could  kill  a  deer  or  so,"  grumbled  Jesse.  "Now 
look  at  us!" 

"Well,"  went  on  Rob,  "look  at  us,  then.  See 
here,  what  Clark  says  about  it : 

"The  Countrey  on  each  Side  the  river  is  fine,  inter- 
spursed  with  Praries,  on  which  immence  herds  of  Deer 
is  seen.  On  the  banks  of  the  river  we  observe  number 
of  Deer  watering  and  feeding  on  the  young  willow, 
Several  killed  to-day.  .  .  .  The  Praries  come  within  a 
Short  distance  of  the  river  on  each  Side,  which  contains 
in  addition  to  Plumbs  Raspberries  &c,  and  quantities  of 
wild  apples,  great  numb™  of  Deer  are  seen  feeding  in 
the  young  willows  and  Earbarge  on  the  Banks  and  on 
the  Sand  bars  in  the  river." 

"I  didn't  know  that  deer  liked  willow  leaves," 
said  John. 

"I  didn't,  either,  but  here  it  is.  And  that  was 
June  26th,  when  the  grass  was  up.  I've  even 
known  some  naturalists  to  say  that  deer  don't 
eat  grass.  We  know  they  do. 

"But  what  we  want  to  get  here  is  the  idea 
that  now  the  expedition  was  just  coming  out 
of  the  hills  and  woods  into  the  edge  of  the 
Prairies.  Across  these  Prairies  and  the  Plains 
came  big  river  valleys  that  led  out  West  toward 
the  Rockies.  If  all  that  had  been  hills  and  tim- 
ber, no  road  ever  would  have  got  through.  It 
was  the  big  waterways  that  made  the  roads 

60 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

into  all  the  wilderness;  we  certainly  learned 
that  up  in  the  Far  North,  didn't  we? 

"So  here  was  their  crossroads  of  the  waters, 
at  old  Independence,  which  now  is  Kansas  City. 
Not  much  here,  but  a  natural  place  for  the  Gate 
to  the  West. 

"Clark  had  a  good  real-estate  eye.    He  says : 

"The  Countrey  about  the  mouth  of  this  river  is  verry 
fine  on  each  Side  as  well  as  north  of  the  Missourie.  A 
high  Clif  t  on  the  upper  Side  of  the  Kanses  J  a  mile  up, 
below  the  Kanses  the  hills  is  about  1|  Miles  from  the 
point  on  the  North  Side  of  the  Missourie  the  Hills  or 
high  lands  is  Several  Miles  back.  .  .  .  The  high  lands 
come  to  the  river  Kansas  on  the  upper  Side  at  about  £  a 
mile,  in  full  view,  &  a  butifull  place  for  a  fort,  good 
landing  place. 

"He  couldn't  spell  much,  or  put  in  his  punc- 
tuation marks,  but  he  certainly  had  a  practi- 
cal eye.  And  I  reckon  the  first  beginnings  of 
the  city  were  right  then,  for  the  Journal 
says,  'Completed  a  strong  redoubt  or 
brestwork  from  one  side  to  the  other,  of  logs 
and  Bushes  Six  feet  high/  Yes,  I  suppose 
that  was  the  first  white  building  here  at  the 
Gate. 

"It's  pretty  hard  to  find  any  new  part  of  the 
world  to-day.  Yonder  runs  the  Kaw,  leading  to 
the  Santa  Fe  Trail — and  I'll  bet  there's  a  thou- 
sand motor  cars  going  west  right  now,  a  hun- 

61 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

dred  times  as  many  cars  each  day  as  there  used 
to  be  wagons  in  a  year !" 

He  closed  his  book  for  the  time.  "Maybe 
that's  what  Uncle  Dick  wanted  us  to  get  in 
our  heads !"  said  he. 

"Some  country!"  said  Jesse;  and  both  John 
and  Rob  agreed. 

When  their  leader  returned  a  little  later  in 
the  evening,  the  boys  told  him  what  they  had 
been  doing. 

"Fine!"  he  said.  "Fine!  Well,  I've  just 
telegraphed  home  that  we're  all  right 
and  that  we're  off  for  the  Platte  to-morrow, 
early." 

"That's  another  old  road  to  the  Rockies," 
said  Rob. 

"One  of  the  greatest — the  very  greatest, 
when  you  leave  out  boat  travel.  The  Platte 
Valley  led  out  the  men  with  plows  on  their 
wagons,  the  home  makers  who  stayed  West. 
You  see,  our  young  leaders  were  only  path- 
finders, not  home  makers." 

"And  a  jolly  good  job  they  had !"  said  Jesse. 

"Yes,  and  jolly  well  they  did  the  job,  son, 
as  you'll  see  more  and  more." 

John  was  running  a  finger  over  the  crude 
map  which  he  and  Jesse  had  been  making  from 
day  to  day.  "Hah !"  said  he.  "Here's  the  big 

62 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

Platte  Valley  coming  in,  but  no  big  city  at  the 
mouth." 

"Oh  yes,  there  is/'  corrected  Uncle  Dick. 
"Omaha  and  Council  Bluffs  you  can  call  the 
same  as  at  the  mouth  of  the  Platte,  for  they 
serve  that  valley  with  a  new  kind  of  trans- 
portation, that  of  steam,  which  did  not 
have  to  stick  to  the  watercourse,  but  took 
shorter  cuts. 

"It's  odd,  but  our  explorers  seem  even  then 
to  have  heard  of  a  road  to  Santa  Fe.  They 
also  say  the  Kansas  River  is  described  as  head- 
ing 'with  the  river  Del  Noird  in  the  black 
Mountain  or  ridge  which  Divides  the  Waters 
of  the  Kansas,  Del  Nord,  &  Collarado.'  No 
doubt  the  early  French  or  the  Indians  confused 
the  Kaw  with  the  Arkansas. 

"Enough!  Taps,  Sergeant!  To  bed,  all  of 
you,"  he  concluded;  and  they  were  willing  to 
turn  in. 

In  the  morning  early  they  were  at  the  dock, 
and  were  greeted  by  Johnson,  who,  sure 
enough,  had  the  gasoline  cans  filled  and  most 
of  the  heavy  supplies  aboard.  By  eight-thirty 
they  were  chugging  away  again  up  the  water 
front  of  the  city,  their  Flag  flying,  so  that 
many  thought  it  was  a  government  boat  of 
some  sort. 

63 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

Jesse  tried  to  write  in  his  notebook,  but  did 
not  make  much  of  a  success,  owing  to  the 
trembling  of  the  boat  under  the  double  power. 

"He  always  says  'we  set  out  and  proceeded 
on/  "  Jesse  explained.  "I  was  trying  to  write 
how  the  expedition  left  the  mouth  of  the  Kan- 
sas River." 

"Look  out  for  'emence  numbers  of  Deer  on 
the  banks/  now,"  sung  out  John,  who  had  the 
Journal  on  a  box  top  near  by.  "  'They  are 
Skipping  in  every  derection.  The  party  killed 
9  Bucks  to-day !'" 

"But  no  buffalo  yet,"  said  Rob. 

"No,  not  till  we  get  up  around  Council  Bluffs 
— then  we'll  begin  to  get  among  them." 

"And  by  to-morrow  afternoon  we'll  be  where 
they  celebrated  their  first  Fourth  of  July.  It 
was  along  in  here.  They  celebrated  the  day  by 
doing  fifteen  miles — closing  the  day  by  another 
'Descharge  from  our  Bow  piece'  and  an  extra 
'Gill  of  Whiskey/  I  don't  call  that  much  of  a 
Fourth !"  John  seemed  disgusted. 

"Well,  maybe  the  soldiers  didn't,  for  they 
had  'Turners  &  Felons  &  the  Musquiters  were 
verry  bad/  "  he  went  on.  "I  don't  think  their 
grub  list  was  right — too  much  meat  and  salt 
stuff.  But  from  now  on  they  certainly  did  get 
plenty  of  game — all  kinds  of  it,  bears,  deer, 

64 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

elk,  beaver,  venison,  buffalo,  turkeys,  geese, 
grouse,  and  fish.  You  see,  Jesse,  they  got  some 
of  those  'white  catfish'  like  the  last  one  you 
caught — a  'channel  cat/  I  suppose  we'd  call  it. 
And  they  ate  wild  fruit  along  shore.  I  think 
the  hunters  had  better  chance  than  the  oarsmen. 

"They  saw  elk  sign  not  far  above  the  Kansas 
River,  but  I  don't  think  they  got  any  elk  till 
August  1st.  Above  there  they  got  into  the 
antelope,  which  they  called  'goat/  and  described 
very  carefully.  They  sent  President  Jefferson 
the  first  antelope  ever  seen  east  of  the  Alle- 
ghanies.  Then  they  got  into  the  bighorn  sheep, 
which  also  were  altogether  new,  and  the  grizzly 
bear,  which  they  called  the  'white  bear/  Oh, 
they  had  fun  enough  from  here  on  north !" 

"Yes,  and  did  their  work  besides,  and  a  lot 
of  it,"  affirmed  Uncle  Dick.  "But  while  we  are 
comparing  notes  we  might  just  as  well  remem- 
ber they  had  some  bad  storms.  I  don't  like  the 
look  of  that  bank  of  clouds." 

They  all  noted  the  heavy  ridges  of  black 
clouds  to  the  west.  The  wind  changed,  coming 
down  the  river  in  squalls  which  tore  up  the  sur- 
face of  the  water  and  threw  the  bow  of  the 
boat  off  its  course. 

"Steady,  Rob !  Slow  down !"  called  out  Uncle 
Dick,  who  had  begun  to  pull  the  tarpaulin  over 

65 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

the  cargo.     "I  can't  judge  the  water  in  this 
wind.    Look  out,  all!" 

Suddenly  there  came  a  jolt  and  a  jar  which 
drove  them  from  their  seats.  The  propellers 
had  struck  a  sand  bar  and  plowed  into  it. 
Caught  by  the  wind,  the  bow  of  the  boat  swung 
around  into  the  current.  Careening,  the  lower 
rail  went  under  and  the  water  came  pouring  in. 


CHAPTER  IX 

SHIPWRECK 

HOLD  her,  boys !"  called  out  Uncle  Dick. 
"Overboard!  Hold  her  up!" 

Even  as  he  spoke  he  had  plunged  overboard 
on  the  upstream  side,  throwing  his  weight  on 
the  rail.  The  water  caught  him  nearly  waist 
deep,  for  the  treacherous  bar  shelved  rapidly. 

It  was  not  so  deep  where  Rob  went  in,  but 
Jesse  and  John,  thoughtlessly  plunging  in  on 
the  lower  side,  were  swept  under  the  boat, 
which  all  the  strength  of  the  other  two  could 
not  hold  back  against  the  combined  power  of 
the  current  and  the  wind. 

Without  warning  they  were  cast  into  an 
accident  which  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  would 
have  meant  death  to  some  or  all  of  them. 

The  boat  was  filling  fast,  and  the  great 
weight  of  the  outboard  motors  buried  her 
stern,  so  she  was  about  to  swamp  in  midstream. 
Uncle  Dick  in  horror  saw  the  set  faces  of  two 
of  his  young  friends  at  the  rail  beyond  him, 
their  legs  under  the  boat,  which  was  swinging 
on  them,  their  terror  showing  in  their  eyes. 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

He  made  one  grasp  across  the  boat,  and  luckily 
caught  Jesse's  hand.  Their  combined  weight 
held  the  boat  down  by  the  bow,  and  she  swung 
downstream,  half  full  but  not  sinking. 

"Swim  for  it,  John,  as  soon  as  we  reach  the 
island!" 

The  voice  of  Uncle  Dick  rose  high  and  clear. 
A  willow-clad  island  lay  below,  toward  which 
the  boat  now  was  setting.  He  knew  the  boys 
all  could  swim,  and  they  were  all  lightly 
dressed,  with  canvas  sneakers  and  no  coat. 

"All  right!"  replied  John,  confidently,  now 
getting  his  legs  free.  "I  can  make  it."  Indeed, 
it  did  not  seem  the  boat  could  carry  another 
pound.  Rob  was  swimming  on  the  upstream 
side,  one  hand  on  the  stern.  Keeping  low  in 
the  water,  they  floated  on  down  in  the  black 
squall  of  wind  and  rain  which  now  came  on 
them.  Their  course  downstream  was  very 
rapid. 

"Now,  John!"  Uncle  Dick  gave  the  word, 
and  John,  without  one  instant's  hesitation, 
struck  out  for  the  island,  now  not  over  forty 
yards  away  over  the  choppy,  rain-whipped 
water.  His  head  was  seen  bobbing  over  the 
waves,  but  gaining  distance.  Uncle  Dick  hardly 
breathed  as  he  watched. 

The  boat  was  lightened  a  little.  Rob  took  a 
68 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

chance,  climbed  in  over  the  stern,  and,  catching 
up  a  setting  pole,  began  to  reach  for  bottom  on 
the  upstream  side.  He  caught  it  and,  putting 
in  all  his  strength,  swung  the  bow  across 
stream,  repeating  again  and  again,  until  the 
boat  was  not  far  back  of  John's  bobbing  head. 
Then  all  at  once  Uncle  Dick  gave  a  shout.  His 
feet  had  struck  bottom  on  the  shelving  sand 
once  more.  Between  them  they  now  could 
guide  and  drag  the  boat  till  they  made  a  land- 
ing, with  Jesse  on  top  the  cargo,  only  about 
fi  f  ty  yards  below  where  John  was  headed.  They 
saw  him  scramble  up  the  bank,  lie  for  an  instant 
half  exhausted,  and  then  come  running  down 
the  shore  to  them.  They  all  dragged  at  the 
water-logged  boat  until  they  had  her  ashore  so 
she  would  hold. 

"And  that's  that!"  panted  John,  coolly  and 
slangily  enough. 

Till  then  no  one  had  spoken.  Uncle  Dick 
couldn't  speak  at  first.  He  only  drew  Jesse 
and  John  to  him,  one  to  each  arm,  wet  as  they 
all  were,  and  in  the  rain  now  pouring  down. 
"Fine,  boys !"  said  he. 

"The  closest  squeak  we've  ever  had,"  said 
Rob,  at  last.  "Right  here  in  the  settlements! 
There's  the  city  of  Leavenworth  just  around 
the  bend." 

69 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"Close  enough !"  said  Uncle  Dick.  "And  my 
compliments  to  you  all,  every  one.  If  it  had 
been  a  lot  of  chaps  less  cool  and  ready,  we'd 
none  of  us  have  been  saved.  Rob,  who  taught 
you  to  paddle  on  the  up  side  when  crossing  a 
current  ?" 

"I  learned  it  of  Moise  Richard,  on  the  Peace 
River,  sir,"  replied  Rob. 

"Right!  Most  people  try  to  hold  her  nose 
against  the  current  by  working  on  the  lower 
side.  Upstream  is  right — and  I  must  say  the 
setting  pole  saved  the  day.  But,  John,  you'll 
never  know  how  I  dreaded  to  tell  you  to  cast 
free  and  swim  for  it.  I  thought  it  was  safest 
for  you." 

"Oh,  that's  nothing,"  said  John.  But  at  the 
same  time  he  was  very  proud  of  his  feat. 

They  were  wet  to  the  skin  and  the  rain  was 
cold,  their  boat  was  full  of  water  and  their 
stores  wet.  At  last,  surely,  they  had  an  adven- 
ture on  their  hands.  But  they  were  not  down- 
hearted over  it  at  all. 

"All  hands  lay  to  for  camp!"  called  Uncle 
Dick. 

They  began  to  unload  the  heavier  stuff,  so 
they  could  cant  the  boat  and  spill  the  bilge 
water  out  of  her.  The  tarpaulin  was  thrown 
over  some  willow  bushes  for  a  shelter,  and 

70 


THEY    SAW    HIM    SCRAMBLE    UP   THE   BANK,    LIE   FOR   AN    INSTANT 

HALF    EXHAUSTED,    AND    THEN    COME   RUNNING    DOWN 

THE    SHORE    TO   THEM 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

under  this  they  piled  their  grub  boxes  and 
dunnage  rolls.  The  beds  were  all  in  water- 
tight canvas  bags,  and  so  were  their  spare 
clothes,  so  matters  might  have  been  worse.  The 
guns  could  be  dried,  and  the  tarpaulin  had 
kept  the  lighter  articles  from  washing  away. 
In  a  little  while  they  got  the  tent  up,  and  then 
they  folded  the  wet  tarpaulin  for  a  floor  and 
hurried  their  outfit  inside,  damp  but  yet  not 
ruined. 

"Get  some  boughs  to  put  inside,"  suggested 
their  leader.  "Get  out  that  little  forced- 
draught  oil  stove  and  let's  see  if  we  can  dry 
out.  It's  going  to  be  hard  to  get  a  fire  on  this 
island  in  this  rain,  for  there's  nothing  but 
willows.  They're  wet.  Get  the  little  stove 
going  and  pull  shut  the  flaps.  When  it  gets  a 
little  warmer  we'll  open  the  bags  and  change 
our  clothes.  And  as  John  would  say,  that'll  be 
that !  But  it's  only  by  mercy  that  we're  here. 
You  are  right,  Rob,  this  is  the  most  serious 
accident  we  have  ever  had  together." 

"Let's  open  a  can  of  soup,  and  issue  an  extra 
gill  of  tea,"  said  Rob. 

They  broke  into  a  roar  of  laughter.  Inside 
of  half  an  hour  the  little  hut  was  steaming 
and  they  all  were  sitting  on  boxes  eating  their 
evening  meal.  The  storm,  which  had  culmi- 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

nated  in  a  fierce  thunder  gust,  now  was  mutter- 
ing itself  away. 

Jesse  went  out  and  brought  in  the  Flag  from 
its  staff  on  the  boat.  "We'll  have  to  dry  her," 
he  said.  "She's  silk,  and  fast  colors." 

"And  I  think  my  expeditionary  force  is  all 
true  blue !"  added  Uncle  Dick,  quietly. 

In  the  night  Jesse  waked  them  all  by  sud- 
denly crying  out  in  a  nightmare.  Rob  shook 
him  awake. 

"What's  wrong,  old  top?"  he  asked. 

"I  guess  I  was  scared,"  admitted  Jesse, 
frankly,  and  pulled  the  covers  over  his  head. 


CHAPTER  X 

AT    THE    PLATTE 

ON  the  morning  following  the  storm  the 
sun  broke  through  the  clouds  with  prom- 
ise of  a  clear,  warm  day.  Our  voyageurs  were 
astir  early. 

"Take  it  easy,  fellows,"  counseled  the  leader. 
'  We've  got  to  'sun  our  powder/  as  our  Journal 
would  say.  John,  when  you  set  down  the  day's 
doings  in  your  own  journal,  make  it  simple  as 
William  Clark  would.  It's  more  manly.  Well, 
here  we  are." 

Rob  looked  ruefully  at  the  wet  willow  thicket 
in  which  their  camp  was  pitched.  "We  can  get 
a  few  dead  limbs,"  he  said,  "but,  wet  as  things 
are  now,  we'd  only  smoke  the  stuff  and  not  dry 
it  much." 

"Wait  for  the  sun,"  advised  John.  And  this 
they  found  it  wise  to  do,  not  leaving  the  island 
until  nearly  noon. 

"Morale  pretty  good!"  said  Uncle  Dick. 
"John,  set  down,  'Men  in  verry  high  sperrits/ 
And  off  we  go !" 

They  chugged  up  directly  to  the  point,  as 
73 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

nearly  as  they  could  determine,  where  they  had 
met  the  disaster  of  the  previous  day.  "Keep 
leading  a  horse  up  to  a  newspaper  and  he'll 
quit  shying  at  it,"  said  Uncle  Dick.  "Find  the 
very  spot  where  we  struck." 

"There  she  is!"  exclaimed  Rob,  presently. 
The  boat  stuck  again  and  began  to  swing.  But 
this  time  the  setting  pole  held  her  bow  firm, 
and,  since  there  was  no  wind,  a  strong  shove 
pushed  her  free  without  anyone  getting  over- 
board. They  went  on  after  that  with  greater 
confidence  than  ever,  and  Jesse  began  to  sing 
the  old  canoe  song  of  the  voyagers,  "En  roulant 
ma  boule,  roulant!" 

They  paused  at  none  of  the  cities  and 
towns  now,  and  only  set  down  the  rivers  and 
main  features,  as  they  continued  their  steady 
journey  day  after  day  for  all  of  a  week.  At 
the  end  of  that  time  the  increasing  shallow- 
ness  of  the  river,  the  many  sand  bars  and 
the  nature  of  the  discolored,  rolling  waters, 
made  them  sure  they  were  approaching  the 
mouth  of  the  great  Platte  River,  which,  as 
they  knew,  rose  far  to  the  west  in  the  Rocky 
Mountains. 

Here  they  went  into  a  camp  and  rested  for 
almost  a  day,  bringing  up  their  field  notes  and 
maps  and  getting  a  good  idea  of  the  country  by 

74 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

comparing  their  records  with  the  old  journals 
of  the  great  expedition. 

"Bear  in  mind  that,  after  all,  they  were  not 
the  first,"  said  Uncle  Dick.  "They  had  picked 
up  old  Dorion,  their  interpreter,  from  a  canoe 
away  down  in  Missouri,  and  brought  him  back 
up  to  help  them  with  the  Sioux,  where  he  had 
lived.  Their  bowman  Cruzatte  and  several 
other  Frenchmen  had  spent  two  years  up  in 
here,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Loup.  There  were 
a  lot  of  cabins,  Indian  trading  camps,  one  of 
them  fifty  years  old,  along  this  part  of  the 
river. 

"But  when  they  got  up  this  far,  they  were 
coming  into  the  Plains.  New  animals  now,  be- 
fore so  very  long.  They  really  were  explorers, 
for  there  were  no  records  to  help  them." 

"You  say  they  found  new  animals  now,"  Rob 
began.  "You  mean  elk,  buffalo  ?" 

"Yes.    No  antelope  yet." 

"They  made  the  Loup  by  July  9th,  above  the 
Nodaway,"  said  John,  his  finger  in  the  Journal. 
"Two  days  later  they  got  into  game  all 
right,  for  Drewyer  killed  six  deer  that  day  him- 
self, and  another  killed  one,  so  they  had  meat 
in  camp. 

"They  made  the  Nemaha  by  July  14th,  and  I 
think  that  was  almost  the  first  time  they  got 
6  75 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

sight  of  elk.  Clark  fired  at  one  that  day,  but 
didn't  get  him.  That  was  where  he  first  wrote 
his  name  and  date  on  a  rock — he  says  the  rock 
'jucted  out  over  the  water/  I  think  that  was 
near  the  mouth,  on  the  banks  of  the  Nishna- 
botna  River,  but  I  don't  suppose  a  fellow  could 
find  it  now,  do  you?" 

"No.  It  never  has  been  reported,  like  the 
two  Boone  signatures  in  Kentucky/'  replied 
Uncle  Dick.  "He  only  wrote  his  name  twice — 
once  up  in  Montana.  But  now,  think  how  this 
new  sort  of  country  struck  them.  Patrick  Gass 
says,  This  is  the  most  open  country  I  ever  saw, 
almost  one  continued  prairie/  What  are  you 
writing  down,  Jesse?" 

"  'Musquitors  verry  troublesome/  "  grinned 
Jesse,  watching  a  big  one  on  his  wrist.  'Til 
bet  they  were  awful/' 

"And  the  men  all  had  'turners  and  boils/  in 
spite  of  their  Verry  high  sperrits/  "  broke  in 
John,  from  the  Journal.  "And  they  gave 
Alexander  Willard  a  hundred  lashes  and  ex- 
pelled him  from  the  enlisted  roll,  for  sleeping 
on  sentinel  post— which  he  had  coming  to  him. 
But  all  the  same,  the  Journal  says  that  this 
party  was  healthier  than  any  party  of  like  size 
'in  any  other  Situation/  His  main  worry  was 
these  pesky  'musquitors/  He  killed  a  deer, 

76 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

but  they  were  so  bad  he  found  it  'Painfull  to 
continue  a  Moment  Still' ! 

"Here's  something  for  you,  Jesse !"  he  added, 
laughing.  "One  day  in  a  'fiew  minits  Cought  3 
verry  large  Cat  fish,  one  nearly  white,  a  quort 
of  Oile  came  out  of  the  Surpolous  fat  of  one 
of  those  fish/  And  all  the  time  they  are  men- 
tioning turkeys  and  geese  and  beaver — isn't  it 
funny  that  all  those  creatures  then  lived  in  the 
same  place?  On  August  2d,  Drewyer  and 
Colter,  two  of  the  hunters,  brought  in  the 
horses  loaded  with  elk  meat.  But  that  was 
just  above  the  Platte,  nearer  Council  Bluffs." 

"One  thing  don't  forget,"  said  Uncle  Dick 
at  this  time.  "All  that  hunting  was  incidental 
to  those  men.  About  the  biggest  part  of  their 
business  was  to  get  in  touch  with  the  Indian 
tribes  and  make  friends  with  them.  You'll  see, 
they  stuck  around  the  mouth  of  the  Platte  quite 
a  while,  sending  out  word,  to  get  the  Indians 
in.  The  same  day  Drewyer  and  Colter  got 
tHe  elK  tHe  men  brought  in  a  'Mr.  Fairfong,* 
an  interpreter,  who  had  some  Dtoes  and  Mis* 
souri  Indians.  Then  there  were  presents  and 
speeches,  and  they  hung  some  D.S.O.  medals 
on  a  half  dozen  of  the  chiefs  and  told  them  to 
be  good,  or  the  Great  Father  at  Washington 
would  get  them. 

77 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"Well,  that's  all  right.  But  what  I  want  you 
to  notice  is  the  camp  at  Council  Bluffs.  That 
wasn't  where  the  city  of  Council  Bluffs,  Iowa, 
is,  but  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  river,  about 
twenty-five  miles  above  Omaha — not  far  from 
Fort  Calhoun.  There  was  no  Omaha  then. 
I  can  remember  my  own  self  when  Omaha  was 
young.  I  used  to  shoot  quail  on  the  Elkhorn 
and  the  Papilion  Creek,  just  above  Omaha,  and 
grand  sport  there  was  for  quail  and  grouse  and 
ducks  all  through  that  country  then. 

"But  Lewis  and  Clark  had  a  wide  eye.  They 
knew  natural  points  of  advantage,  and  they 
must  have  foreseen  what  the  Platte  Valley  was 
going  to  mean  before  long.  They  say  that  Coun- 
cil Bluffs  was  'a  verry  proper  place  for  a  Trade- 
ing  Establishment  and  fortification/  Trust 
them  to  know  the  Verry  proper  places' !  Only, 
what  I  can't  understand  is  the  note  that  it  is 
'twenty-five  days  from  this  to  Santafee.' 
That's  a  puzzler.  The  natural  place  of  depar- 
ture for  Santa  Fe  was  where  Kansas  City  is, 
not  Omaha.  But,  surely,  they  had  heard  of  it, 
somehow." 

'Well,"  said  Rob,  "we're  doing  pretty  well, 
pretty  well.  In  spite  of  delays,  we're  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Platte,  sixteen  days  out,  and  they 
didn't  get  there  till  July  21st.  I  figure  three 

78 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

hundred  and  sixty-six  miles  to  Kansas  City,  and 
two  hundred  and  sixty-six  miles  to  here,  say 
six  hundred  and  thirty-two  miles  for  sixteen 
days — the  river  chart  says  six  hundred  and 
thirty-five  miles.  That  keeps  us  pretty  close 
to  our  average  we  set — over  forty  miles  a  day. 
We've  got  to  boost  that,  though. 

"Are  we  going  to  stop  at  Omaha,  sir?"  he 
added,  rather  anxiously. 

"Not  on  anybody's  life!"  rejoined  Uncle 
Dick.  "Nice  place,  but  we're  a  day  late.  No, 
sir,  we'll  skip  through  without  even  a  salute 
to  the  tribes  from  our  bow  piece.  We've  got 
to  get  up  among  the  Sioux.  Dorion  has  been 
talking  all  the  time  about  the  Sioux.  So  good- 
by  for  the  present  to  the  Platte  tribes,  the 
Pawnees,  Missouris,  and  Otoes." 

"Gee!  I'd  like  to  shoot  something,"  said 
Jesse,  wistfully.  "Just  reading  about  things, 
now!" 

"Forget  it  for  a  while,  Jess,"  smiled  his 
uncle.  "Just  remember  that  we're  under  the 
eaves  of  two  great  cities,  here  at  Plattsmouth. 
Take  comfort  in  the  elk  and  beaver  sign  you 
can  imagine  in  the  sand,  here  at  the  mouth  of 
this  river.  It  still  is  six  hundred  yards  wide, 
with  its  current  Verry  rapid  roleing  over 
Sands.' 

79 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"Two  voyagers  of  the  Lewis  and  Clark  ex- 
pedition had  wintered  here  before  that  time, 
trapping — the  beaver  were  so  thick.  Imagine 
yourself  not  far  up  the  river  and  shooting  at 
an  elk  four  times,  as  Will  Clark  did — then  not 
getting  him.  Imagine  yourself  along  with  that 
summer  fishing  party  along  this  little  old  river, 
and  getting  upward  of  eight  hundred  fish, 
seventy-nine  pike,  and  four  hundred  and  ninety 
cats;  and  again  three  hundred  and  eighteen 
'silver  fish' — I  wonder,  now,  if  that  really  could 
have  been  the  croppy?  Lord!  boy — what  a 
time  they  had,  strolling,  hunting,  fishing,  ex- 
ploring new  lands,  visiting  Indians,  having  the 
time  of  their  lives!" 

"Let's  be  off/'  suggested  Rob.  And  soon 
they  were  plugging  along  up  the  great  river, 
threading  their  way  among  the  countless  bars 
and  shoals. 

"I  can  see  the  full  boats  coming  down  the 
Platte!"  said  Jesse,  shading  his  eyes,  "hide 
canoes,  full  of  beaver  bales,  that  float  light! 
And  there  are  the  voyageurs,  all  with  whiskers 
and  long  rifles  and  knives." 

"Yes,"  said  Uncle  Dick,  gravely.  "And  here 
are  our  men,  tall,  in  uniform  coats  and  buck- 
skin leggings.  See  now" — and  he  reached  for 
John's  volume — "they  let  off  the  deserter, 

80 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

Moses  Reed,  very  light.  He  only  had  to  run 
the  gantlet  of  the  entire  party  four  times — each 
man  with  nine  switches — and  get  dropped  from 
the  rolls  of  the  Volunteers ! 

"And  here  is  where  Captain  Lewis,  experi- 
menting with  some  strange  water  he  had  found 
— with  some  cobalt  and  'isonglass'  in  it — got 
very  ill  from  it.  His  friend  Clark  says  'Cop- 
peras and  Alum  is  verry  pisen.' ' 

"But  when  did  they  first  find  the  buffalo?" 
demanded  Jesse,  fingering  once  more  the  little 
rifle  which  always  lay  near  him  in  the  boat. 
"Gee !  now,  I'd  like  to  kill  a  buffalo  I" 

"All  in  due  time,  all  in  due  time,  Jess !"  his 
leader  replied.  "My,  but  you  are  bloodthirsty ! 
Wait  now  till  August  23d,  above  Sioux  City. 
You  are  Captain  William  Clark,  with  your  elk- 
hide  notebook  inside  your  shirt  front,  and  you 
have  gone  ashore  and  have  killed  a  fat  buck. 
And  when  you  get  back  to  the  boat  J.  Fields 
comes  in  and  says  he  has  killed  a  buffalo,  in 
the  plain  ahead;  and  Lewis  takes  twelve  men 
and  has  the  buffalo  brought  to  the  boat  at  the 
next  bend ;  so  you  just  make  no  fuss  over  that 
first  buffalo,  and  set  it  down  in  your  elk-hide 
book.  And  that  same  day  two  elk  swam  across 
the  river  ahead  of  the  boat.  And  that  same 
evening  R.  Field  brought  in  two  deer  on  a  horse, 

81 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

and  another  deer  was  shot  from  the  boat ;  and 
they  all  saw  elk  standing  on  a  sand  bar.  and  sev- 
eral prairie  wolves.  And  the  very  next  day, 
don't  you  remember,  you  saw  great  herds  of 
buffalo  ?  Oh,  now  you're  in  the  Plains !  Every- 
body now  is  'jurking  meat.'  What  more  do 
you  want,  son?" 

"Aw,  now!"   said  Jesse.     "Well,  anyway, 
we're  about  in  town." 


CHAPTER  XI 

AMONG  THE  SIOUX 

"KTOW  we  are  leaving  the  Pawnees  and 
IN  passing  into  the  Sioux  country!"  said 
Rob. 

They  were  passing  under  the  great  railroad 
bridge  which  connected  Council  Bluffs,  Iowa, 
with  Omaha,  Nebraska.  The  older  member  of 
the  party  nodded  gravely.  "And  can't  you  see 
the  long  lines  of  the  white-topped  covered 
wagons  going  west — a  lifetime  later  than 
Lewis  and  Clark,  when  still  there  was  no  bridge 
here  at  all  ?  Can't  you  see  the  Mormons  going 
west,  with  their  little  hand  carts,  and  their  cows 
hitched  up  to  wagons  with  the  oxen?  Look 
at  the  ghosts,  Rob !  Hit  her  up.  Let's  get  out 
of  here!" 

"She's  running  fine,"  Rob  went  on.  "Some- 
how I  think  this  must  be  better  water,  above  the 
Platte.  You  know,  Lewis  and  Clark  only  aver- 
aged  nine  miles  a  day,  but  along  in  here  for 
over  two  hundred  miles  they  were  beating  that, 
doing  seventeen  and  one-quarter,  twenty  and 
one-quarter,  seventeen,  twenty-two  and  one- 

83 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

half,  seventeen  and  one-half,  sixteen,  seven- 
teen, twenty  and  one-half,  twenty  and  one-half, 
fifteen,  ten  and  three-quarters,  fifteen,  ten — not 
counting  two  or  three  broken  days.  They  seem 
to  have  got  the  hang  of  the  river,  somehow." 

"So  have  we/'  nodded  the  other.  "I'll  give 
you  five  days  to  make  Sioux  City." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  stout  little  ship 
Adventurer  now  began  to  pick  up  on  her  own 
when  they  had  passed  that  Iowa  city,  going 
into  camp  on  the  evening  of  June  4th  well 
above  the  town.  They  purchased  bread, 
poultry,  eggs,  and  butter  of  a  near-by  farmer, 
and  opened  a  jar  of  marmalade  for  Jesse,  to 
console  him  for  the  lack  of  buffalo. 

"It's  my  birthday,  too,  to-day,"  said  Jesse. 
"I  was  born  on  the  fourth  day  of  June,  four- 
teen years  ago.  My!  it  seems  an  awful  long 
time." 

"Well,  Captain  Meriwether  Lewis  was  not 
born  on  this  day,"  said  his  uncle,  but  his  birth- 
day was  celebrated  on  this  spot  by  his  party, 
on  August  18,  1805,  and  they  celebrated  it  with 
a  dance,  and  an  'extra  gill  of  whiskey.' ' 

"We'll  issue  an  extra  gill  of  marmalade  to 
the  men  to-night,  and  conclude  our  day  of  hard 
travel  with  a  'Descharge  of  the  Bow  piece/ 
just  because  it's  the  Fourth  of  June.  We're 

84 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

hitting  things  off  in  great  style  now,  and  I'm 
beginning  to  have  more  confidence  in  gasoline." 

"What  made  you  want  to  get  to  this  place, 
Uncle  Dick?"  asked  John,  his  own  mouth  rather 
full  of  fried  chicken. 

"Because  of  the  location — the  mouth  of  the 
Sioux  River,  and  at  the  lower  edge  of  the  great 
Sioux  nation. 

"Lewis  and  Clark  tried  to  get  peace  among 
all  these  river  tribes.  They  held  a  big  council 
here,  decorating  a  few  more  Otoes  and  Mis- 
souris,  and  telling  them  to  make  peace  with  the 
Omahas  and  the  Pawnee  Loups.  The  Sioux 
had  not  yet  been  found,  though  their  hunting 
fires  were  seen  all  through  here,  and  Lewis 
was  very  anxious  to  have  his  interpreter, 
Dorion,  find  some  Sioux  and  bring  them  into 
council. 

"It  was  at  Captain  Lewis's  birthday  party 
that  the  first  and  only  casualty  of  the  trip 
ensued.  You  remember  Sergeant  Floyd — he 
spelled  worse  than  Clark,  and  Ordway  worse 
than  either — and  his  journal  of  some  twenty 
thousand  words,  which  he  had  kept  till  now? 
Well,  he  danced  hard  at  the  birthday  party  or 
at  the  Indian  council,  and  got  overheated,  after 
which  he  lay  down  on  the  damp  sand  and  got 
chilled.  It  gave  him  what  the  Journal  calls  a 

85 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

'Biliose  Chorlick,'  and  on  the  second  day  he 
died.  He  was  buried  on  the  bluffs  below  the 
town,  at  what  still  is  called  Floyd's  Bluff,  on 
the  river  they  named  after  him,  with  military 
honors,  and  his  grave  long  was  known.  His 
river  still  is  known  by  his  name,  and  it  runs 
right  into  the  town  of  Sioux  City.  The  river 
washed  the  bank  away  under  his  grave,  and 
in  1857  the  remains  were  reburied,  back  from 
the  river.  That  spot  was  marked  by  a  slab 
in  1895,  and  a  monument  was  put  over  it  in 
May,  1901.  I  was  a  guest  at  the  dedication  of 
that  obelisk.  It  was  erected  under  the  super- 
vision of  General  Hiram  Chittenden,  the  great 
engineer  and  great  historian.  It  has  a  city 
park  all  of  its  own,  and  a  marvelous  landscape 
it  commands. 

"Well,  poor  Floyd  had  no  memorial  in  those 
rude  days,  beyond  a  'seeder  post.'  They  did 
what  they  could  and  then  they  'set  out  under 
a  gentle  Breeze  and  proceeded  on/  ' 

"Well,  but  Dorion  knew  this  country,  then  ?" 
John  began  again,  after  a  time. 

"Yes,"  Rob  was  first  to  answer,  "and  that's 
what  puzzles  me — how  they  got  such  exact 
knowledge  of  a  wild  region.  I  suppose  it  was 
because  they  had  no  railroads  and  so  had  to 
know  geography.  The  Journal  says  that  the 

86 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

Sioux  River  heads  with  the  St.  Peter's  (Minne- 
sota) River,  passing  the  head  of  the  Des 
Moines;  all  of  which  is  true.  And  it  tells  of 
the  Red  Pipestone  quarry,  on  a  creek  coming 
into  the  Sioux.  Clark  puts  down  all  those 
things  and  does  not  forget  the  local  stuff.  He 
says  the  'Countrey  above  the  Platte  has  a  great 
Similarity' — which  means  the  Plains  as  they 
saw  them.  And  look,  in  John's  book — here  he 
says  'I  found  a  verry  excellent  froot  resem- 
bling the  read  Current/  What  was  it — the 
Sarvice  berry?  He  says  it  is  'about  the  Com- 
mon hight  of  a  wild  Plumb.'  Nothing  escaped 
these  chaps — geography,  natural  history,  game, 
Indians,  or  anything  else!  They  must  have 
worked  every  minute  of  the  day." 

"I  think  his  new  berry  was  what  we  used  to 
call  the  buffalo  berry,  in  our  railway  surveys 
out  West,"  said  Uncle  Dick.  "It  was  bigger 
than  a  currant  and  made  very  fair  pies. 

"But  now  we've  just  begun  to  catch  up  with 
our  story,  for  we  were  talking  some  time  back 
where  they  first  got  a  buffalo.  That  was  about 
thirty  or  forty  miles  above  here.  By  to-mor- 
row night  we'll  camp  in  our  fifth  state  since 
we  left  home — Missouri,  Kansas,  Nebraska, 
Iowa,  South  Dakota." 

"On  our  way !"  sung  out  Rob.  "We  haven't 
87 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

got  any  antelope  yet,  nor  found  a  prairie  dog, 
nor  seen  a  single  Sioux." 

"Softly,  softly !"  smiled  the  older  companion. 
"At  least  we're  in  the  Sioux  and  antelope 
range." 

Their  little  tent  was  pitched  within  a  short 
distance  of  the  river,  and  their  fire  made  shad- 
ows along  the  wall  of  willows.  At  times  they 
all  fell  silent,  bringing  to  mind  the  wild  scenes 
of  this  same  country  in  a  time  which  now  began 
to  seem  not  so  long  ago. 

"My !"  said  Jesse,  after  a  time,  as  he  sat  on 
his  bed  roll,  his  hands  clasped  before  his  knees. 
"Think  of  it!  The  Plains,  the  buffalo,  the 
Indians !  Weren't  they  the  lucky  guys !" 

"Well,  yes,"  replied  his  uncle,  "though  I'd 
rather  call  them  fortunate  gentlemen  than 
lucky  guys.  One  thing  sure,  they  were  accurate 
when  they  said  the  'musquitors  were  verry 
troublesom'  in  all  this  Missouri  Valley.  They 
had  to  issue  nets  and  bars  to  the  men,  so  it 
says,  and  the  misquitr,  or  mosquiter,  or  mus- 
quitor,  was  about  the  only  'anamal'  they  feared, 
If  we  don't  turn  in,  they'll  carry  us  off 
to-night." 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  LOST  HUNTER^ 

"T*TS  a  long,  long  way  up  to  the  Mandans!" 
1  sang  John  at  the  second  camp  above  the 
Council  Bluffs.  "Wonder  if  we  ever  will  get 
there  before  winter !  Here  we  are,  just  below 
the  Vermilion,  over  nine  hundred  and  fifty 
miles  up  the  river,  and  over  three  weeks  out, 
but  we're  only  halfway  to  the  Yellowstone,  and 
still  a  good  deal  more  than  six  hundred  miles 
below  the  Mandan  Villages,  though  I've 
counted  fifty-three  towns  and  cities  we've 
passed  in  the  river,  coming  this  far.  It  cer- 
tainly does  look  as  though  we'll  have  to  winter 
up  there,  sure  enough." 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,"  demurred  Rob,  con- 
sulting the  pages  of  his  own  notebook.  "No 
fellow  can  ask  an  outboard  motor  to  do  better 
than  ours  have.  I'll  admit  we're  just  inside  our 
forty-mile-a-day  stunt,  but  that's  five  miles  an 
hour  and  only  eight  hours  a  day.  I'll  bet  they 
would  have  been  mighty  glad  to  do  half  that." 

"I've  been  wondering  how  they  were  able  to 
spurt  so  much,  north  of  the  Platte,"  said  John. 

89 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"I'll  bet  I  know!"  broke  in  Jesse.  "It's  be- 
cause the  shores  were  more  open,  so  they  could 
use  the  cordelle!  They'd  been  doing  it,  too, 
for  on  August  26th  they  made  a  new  Toe 
line'  out  of  braided  elk  hide.  Clark  killed  an 
elk  on  August  25th,  and  Reuben  Fields  killed 
five  deer  that  day,  and  George  Shannon  killed 
an  elk  that  day,  too.  So  they  'jurked  the  meet,' 
and  made  the  hides  into  a  tracking  line.  That 
beats  rowing  or  paddling  to  get  up  a  river. 
We  saw  that  on  the  Peace  River  and  the 
Mackenzie,  didn't  we  ?" 

"I  believe  you're  right,  son!"  said  Rob. 
"These  long  sandy  reaches,  where  the  men 
could  trot  on  the  line — that  was  where  they  got 
their  mileage,  I'll  warrant." 

"George  Shannon?"  said  Uncle  Dick,  who 
was  listening  as  he  sat  on  his  bed  roll  near  the 
fire.  "George  Shannon,  eh?  Well,  he  didn't 
bring  in  any  more  elk  meat  after  that  for  many 
a  day,  that's  sure." 

"I  know!"  Rob  nodded.  "That's  the  man 
that  got  lost!" 

"Yes,  and  trouble  enough  it  gave  the  party 
and  the  leaders.  They  sent  out  two  men, 
Shields  and  J.  Fields,  to  find  him  and  the 
horses.  That  was  the  second  day.  But  they 
didn't  find  him.  He  didn't  show  up  for  sixteen 

90 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

days.  Luckily,  he  kept  on  ahead  of  the  boat 
all  the  time,  but,  as  we  all  know,  the  most  con- 
fusing way  on  earth  to  get  lost  from  a  party  is 
while  you  are  on  foot  and  the  party  is  in  a  boat. 
Even  Sir  Alexander  Mackenzie  got  lost  that 
way,  on  the  Findlay  River ;  and  so  have  we  all 
of  us." 

"Well,  poor  Shannon  nearly  starved  to  death. 
I  don't  think  he  was  a  first-class  hunter,  either, 
or  he'd  not  have  gone  out  without  his  ammuni- 
tion. In  a  country  swarming  with  game  he 
went  for  twelve  days  with  only  grapes  to  eat, 
except  one  rabbit  that  he  shot  with  a  piece  of 
stick  instead  of  a  bullet.  He  held  on  to  one 
horse,  and  lucky  he  did.  Here's  what  the  Jour- 
nal says  about  Shannon — whom  Lewis  himself 
found : 

"He  became  weak  and  feable  determined  to  lay  by 
and  wait  for  a  tradeing  boat,  which  is  expected.  Keep- 
ing one  horse  as  a  last  resorse,  yet  a  man  had  like  to 
have  starved  to  death  in  a  land  of  Plenty  for  the  want 
of  Bullits  or  something  to  kill  his  meat." 

"Where  was  he  when  they  found  him?"  John 
had  his  map  ready. 

"Well,  let's  see.  They  found  him  on  Sep- 
tember llth,  and  they  had  traveled  thirteen 
days,  not  counting  stops,  and  made  one  hundred 
and  sixty  miles  by  the  river.  They  must  by 

7  91 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

then  have  been  at  least  thirty  miles  above  what 
is  now  Fort  Randall,  South  Dakota — I  should 
say,  somewhere  near  Wheeler,  South  Dakota. 
Well,  something  of  a  walk  for  George,  eh?" 

"Rather!"  was  Jesse's  comment.  "Oh,  I 
suppose  it's  easy  to  call  him  a  dub,  but  the  com- 
manding officers  didn't." 

"But  now,"  went  on  their  leader,  "a  lot  of 
things  have  been  happening  since  Shannon  left, 
and  here  are  a  lot  of  interesting  things  to  keep 
in  mind.  One  thing  is,  they  expected  a  trading 
boat  up.  That  must  have  been  from  St.  Louis, 
for  Trudeau's  post.  That  was  long  before  the 
days  of  the  regular  fur  forts,  and  that  accounts 
for  all  this  country  having  its  French  names 
on  it. 

"Another  thing  or  two:  By  this  time,  in 
lower  South  Dakota,  everybody  was  killing 
buffalo  and  elk,  great  quantities  of  splendid 
meat.  By  now,  also,  in  early  September,  they 
had  got  on  the  antelope  range  for  the  first  time, 
and  their  first  "goat/  as  they  called  it,  was 
skinned  and  described.  They  got  another  new 
animal,  which  they  called  a  'barkeing  squirel/ 
or  'ground  rat' — on  September  7th.  That  was 
the  first  prairie  dog,  a  great  curiosity  to  them — 
the  same  day  they  saw  their  first  'goat/  They 
managed  to  drown  out  one  prairie  dog,  which 

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ON  THE  MISSOURI 

I  never  heard  of  anyone  else  being  able  to  do. 
They  dug  down  six  feet,  and  did  not  get  half- 
way to  the  lodge/  as  they  called  the  den. 

"Also,  they  saw  the  western  magpie,  which 
seemed  a  Verry  butifull'  bird  to  them.  Also 
again,  on  September  5th,  they  had  seen  their 
first  blacktail  deer,  which  now,  until  they  got 
into  the  Mandan  and  Yellowstone  country,  was 
to  outnumber  the  white  tail,  which  they  called 
the  'common  deer/  because  they  never  had  seen 
any  other  sort.  On  one  day,  September  17th, 
Lewis  and  his  men  killed  two  blacktail,  eight 
'fallow'  deer,  and  five  'common'  deer.  Gass — 
who  by  now  has  been  elected  sergeant  to  take 
poor  Floyd's  place — in  his  Journal  says  they 
killed  thirteen  common  deer,  two  black-tailed, 
three  buffalo,  and  a  'goat'  that  day — not  a  half 
bad  day,  that,  eh  ?  Don't  you  wish  we'd  been 
along? 

"But  Gass  in  his  book  also  says  something 
I  want  you  to  remember,  for  it  may  help  ex- 
plain the  'fallow'  deer  which  Clark  mentions, 
and  which  I  don't  understand  at  all.  Gass  says: 
'There  is  another  species  of  deer  in  this  country, 
with  small  horns  and  long  tails.  The  tail  of 
one  we  killed  was  18  inches  long.'  Now  that 
precisely  coincides  with  the  'f  antaiF  deer  which 
some  old-time  hunters  of  my  acquaintance  say 

93 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

they  have  killed  in  the  Black  Hills  country, 
though  scientists  say  there  never  was  any  fan- 
tail  deer.  Our  men  were  now  right  east  of  the 
Black  Hills.  For  myself,  I  am  convinced  there 
was  a  fantail  deer,  and  that  it  has  far  more 
rights  as  a  species  than  the  dozen  or  more 
'species'  of  bears  which  our  Washington  scien- 
tists keep  on  finding. 

"But  even  this  is  not  all  I  am  trying  to  get 
into  your  minds  about  this  country  where  our 
lost  hunter  Shannon  was  wandering  alone. 
They  were  getting  all  sorts  of  elk,  catfish,  and 
beaver,  from  the  last  of  August  on,  but  better 
here — on  September  5th  they  saw  both  'goats' 
and  wild  turkeys  on  the  same  day.  Did  you 
know  that  wild  turkeys  ranged  so  far  north? 
Well,  they  at  that  time  overlapped  the  range  of 
the  buffalo,  the  elk,  the  black-tailed  deer,  the 
badger,  the  antelope,  the  prairie  dog,  and  the 
magpie. 

"And  in  this  hunting  paradise,  they  killed  on 
one  day,  September  8th,  two  buffalo,  one  large 
elk,  one  small  elk,  four  deer,  three  turkeys,  and 
a  squirrel.  All  gone  now,  even  almost  all  the 
prairie  dogs  and  maybe  the  magpies;  and  we 
haven't  seen  any  young  wild  geese  on  our 
trip,  either.  But  now,  following  out  the  record 
of  these  men,  we  can  see  what  a  wonderful 

94 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

hunting  country  they  had  been  in,  almost  every 
day  from  St.  Louis,  especially  here,  where  the 
lower  country  began  to  blend  with  the  high 
Plains  and  their  game  animals.  Great  days, 
boys — great  days!  Alas!  that  they  are  gone 
for  you  and  me  forever." 

"You're  getting  off  the  track,  Uncle  Dick," 
said  John,  critically,  just  now,  as  the  former 
concluded  his  long  talk  on  the  game  animals. 

"Why,  what  do  you  mean  ?" 

"While  Shannon  was  lost,  and  while  they 
were  all  having  such  good  luck  hunting,  they 
at  last  had  found  their  Sioux  and  got  them  in 
for  a  council.  That  was  under  an  oak  tree, 
at  the  mouth  of  the  Jacque,  or  James,  River, 
on  August  29th.  Old  man  Dorion  had  found 
his  son  Pierre,  who  was  trading  among  the 
Sioux,  it  says.  Well,  they  got  five  chiefs  and 
about  seventy  others,  and  they  all  went  into 
council." 

"Oak  tree,  did  you  say,  John?  Oak  tree 
this  far  north  ?"  Jesse  was  particular. 

"Yes,  sir,  oak  tree — lots  of  them  all  through 
here  then.  Clark  tells  how  the  deer  and  elk 
ate  the  acorns,  and  how  fond  they  were  of 
them.  Didn't  you  notice  that?" 

"Well,  let's  push  off  and  run  up  to  the  old 
council  ground,"  said  Rob,  who  was  always 

95 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

for  getting  forward.  "It  can't  be  more  than 
a  few  hours'  run,  for  we  don't  stop  at  any 
towns,  you  know." 

They  did  this,  and  spent  some  time  study- 
ing the  spot,  so  that  they  could  believe  they 
were  on  the  very  council  ground  where  Lewis 
and  Clark  first  met  the  Sioux,  below  the  Calu- 
met Bluff,  on  the  "Butifull  Plain  near  the  foot 
of  the  high  land  which  rises  with  a  gradual 
assent  near  this  Bluff."  At  least  a  trace  of  the 
old  abundance  of  the  timber  could  be  seen. 
They  consulted  their  Journal  and  argued  for  a 
long  time. 

"This  is  where  they  sent  out  the  two  men  to 
hunt  for  the  lost  man  Shannon,"  said  Rob. 
"And  here  is  where  our  captains  made  their 
big  treaty  speeches  with  the  Sioux  and  gave 
them  medals  and  the  D.S.O.,  and  the  Con- 
gressional Medal  and  things.  They  had  a  lot 
of  government  'Good  Indian'  certificates  all 
ready  to  fill  in,  and  it  peeved  them  when  one 
of  the  chiefs  handed  back  his  certificate  and 
said  he  didn't  care  for  it,  but  would  rather 
have  some  whiskey." 

"Those  Sioux  must  have  been  a  surly  bunch," 
said  Rob.  "But  Captain  Lewis  impressed  them 
very  much,  and  Captain  Clark  let  down  his 
long  red  hair  and  astonished  them,  and  every- 

96 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

body  fed  them  and  gave  them  presents;  and 
they  appointed  young  Mr.  Dorion  a  commis- 
sioner, and  gave  him  a  flag,  and  told  him  to 
bring  about  a  peace  between  all  these  tribes — 
the  Sioux,  Omahas,  Pawnees,  Poncas,  Otoes, 
and  Missouris — and  to  try  to  get  chiefs  of 
each  tribe  to  go  down  the  river  and  to  Wash- 
ington, to  see  the  Great  Father.  And  the  Jour- 
nal kept  them  good  and  busy,  setting  down  the 
names  of  the  different  bands  of  the  Sioux  and 
telling  how  they  looked." 

John  grinned,  and  pointed  to  the  page. 
"  'The  Warriers  are  Verry  much  deckerated 
with  Paint  Porcupine  quils  and  feathers,  large 
leagins  and  mockersons,  all  with  buffalow 
robes  of  Different  Colors,  the  Squars  wore 
Peticoats  and  a  White  Buffalow  roabe  with 
the  black  hare  turned  back  over  their  necks 
and  Sholders.'  I'll  say  they  had  plenty  to 
do,  writing  and  hunting  and  making  speeches. 
It  wasn't  any  pleasure  party,  when  you  come 
right  down  to  it,  now!" 

"We  haven't  found  George  Shannon  yet," 
interrupted  Jesse,  dryly. 

"Give  us  time!"  answered  Rob.  "I  vote  to 
stay  here  all  night.  I  can  see  the  blue  smokes 
of  their  council  fires,  and  see  the  men  dancing, 
and  the  painted  Indians  sitting  around,  and  the 

97 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

great  council  pipe  passing — red  pipestone,  with 
eagle  feathers  on  the  stem;  and  meat  hanging 
in  camp,  and  the  squaws  cooking,  dogs  yelping, 
drums  going.  Oh,  by  Jove!  Oh,  by  Jove! 
Those  were  the  things  to  make  you  sit  up  late 
at  night!  I  wish  we'd  been  along." 

"We  are  along!"  said  Uncle  Dick,  soberly. 
"If  you  can  see  those  stirring  scenes,  we  are 
along.  So,  Rob,  as  you  say,  we'll  pitch  our 
camp  and  dream,  for  at  least  a  day,  of  our 
own  wonderful  America  when  it  was  young." 

John  and  Jesse  were  busy  clearing  a  place 
for  the  tent.  "I  want  the  fire  right  close  up 
to  the  tent,"  said  John,  "and  we  don't  want  to 
burn  off  either  a  tent  pole  or  an  overhead  guy 
rope." 

"Oh,"  rejoined  Jesse,  the  youngest  of  them 
all,  "I'll  show  you  how  to  do  that!" 

He  dug  into  his  war  bag  and  brought  out  a 
roll  of  stout  wire.  "Run  this  from  the  top  of 
the  front  pole  on  out,  ten  or  twelve  feet,  and 
stretch  it  over  a  couple  of  shear  poles.  See? 
That'll  stiffen  the  tent,  and  yet  you  can  build 
a  fire  right  under  the  wire,  and  it  won't  hurt 
it  any." 

"A  good  idea,  Jesse,"  approved  their  leader 
as  he  saw  this.  "A  mighty  good  idea  for  cold 
weather — about  as  good  as  your  open  fireplace 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

of  sheet  steel  with  a  stovepipe — open  wider  in 
front  than  behind,  and  reflecting  the  heat  into 
the  tent.  I've  tried  that  last  invention  of  yours, 
Jess,  and  it  works  fine  in  coolish  weather. 
We'll  try  it  again,  maybe." 

"I'm  making  me  a  new  kind  of  airplane 
now,"  said  Jesse,  modestly.  "It's  different  in 
some  ways.  I  like  to  sort  of  figure  things  out, 
that  way." 

"That's  good.  And  to-night,  son,  I  want 
you  to  see  whether  you  can't  figure  out  a  nice 
fat  catfish  on  your  set  line.  We  need  meat  in 
camp;  and  that's  about  what  it'll  have  to  be, 
I  suppose." 

Thus,  talking  together  of  this  thing  and  that, 
they  made  their  own  comfortable  camp,  spread- 
ing down  their  own  buffalo  robes  on  the  ground 
for  their  beds,  on  the  old  council  ground  of 
the  Sioux.  They  had  a  hearty  supper  and  soon 
were  ready  to  turn  in,  for  the  mosquitoes  were 
bad  enough,  as  they  found.  Rob  sat  late  at 
night  alone  by  the  little  fire. 

"Come  on  to  bed,  Rob,"  called  Jesse.  "What 
do  you  see  out  there,  anyway?" 

"Indians,"  replied  Rob.  "Sioux  in  robes  and 
feathers.  Two  men  in  uniform  coats,  one  tall 
and  dark,  the  other  tall  and  with  red  hair. 
Don't  you  see  them,  too?" 

99 


CHAPTER  XIII 

GETTING  NORTH 

"OUT  we  haven't  found  George  Shannon 
D  yet/'  again  insisted  Jesse,  at  their  break- 
fast. " 

"And  you  haven't  run  your  set  line  yet,  Mr. 
Jess,"  reminded  Rob;  which  was  enough  to 
cause  Jesse  to  run  down  to  the  bank  with  his 
mouth  full  of  bacon.  He  had  forgotten  all  about 
his  fishing  at  the  time.  At  once  they  heard  him 
shout  in  excitement,  and  joined  him  on  the  bank. 

"Geewhillikens !"  called  Jesse.  "I  got  a 
whale  on  here  now !" 

He  was  playing  a  fish  on  his  hand  line,  tak- 
ing in  and  giving  line  as  he  could,  for  the  fish 
was  strong.  It  was  some  time  before  they 
could  get  to  see  it,  and  when  Jesse  at  last 
landed  it  on  the  bank  he  called  for  his  .22  rifle 
and  shot  it  through  the  head. 

"There !"  he  said.  "I  knew  I'd  find  some  big 
game  to  shoot.  Isn't  he  a  whale?  I'll  bet  he'll 
go  twelve  pounds.  He's  a  whiter  cat,  and  a 
racier,  than  the  big  yellows,  down  below.  He 
looks  gamier  and  better  to  eat." 

100 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"He  goes  in  the  gunny  sack  for  supper," 
said  Rob.  "Do  you  suppose  he'll  keep  for  three 
days,  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles?  I  shouldn't 
wonder  if  Shannon  would  enjoy  a  bite,  for 
he'll  be  hungry  by  that  time." 

"It's  a  long,  long  way,  up  to  the  Mandans !" 
John  began  to  sing  again.  "Six  hundred  miles. 
And  we'll  have  to  have  gas  pretty  soon." 

They  finished  their  breakfast,  and,  with  the 
skill  they  had  gained  in  many  camps  together, 
soon  were  packed  and  on  their  way  above  the 
old  council  camp  of  the  Sioux. 

"Buffalo  and  elk,  every  way  you  can  look !" 
exclaimed  John.  "Elk  swimming  across  the 
river.  Herds  of  game  feeding  on  the  bluff 
sides!  Grouse,  foxes,  prairie  dogs,  jack  rab- 
bits, pelicans,  squirrels,  deer,  wolves — the  boats 
full  of  meat  all  the  time,  and  two  or  three 
beaver  every  night !  Now  there's  cottonwoods. 
By  and  by  the  river'll  begin  to  take  a  straighter 
shoot  north.  It's  a  long,  long  way  up  to  the 
Mandans !" 

"And  right  through  the  country  of  those 
roaming,  murdering  Sioux!"  added  Rob. 

"Right  you  are,  Rob,"  said  Uncle  Dick.  "The 
Sioux  used  to  hunt  and  rob  as  far  as  Fort 
Laramie,  six  hundred  miles  up  the  Platte,  and 
on  the  head  of  the  Jim  River  in  Dakota,  and 

101 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

all  between.  Their  homes  were  where  their 
hats  were — and  they  hadn't  any  hats." 

For  some  days  now  they  threaded  their  way 
among  the  countless  islands  and  sand  bars  of 
the  great  river,  until  at  last  they  made  camp 
early  on  the  evening  of  June  9th,  near  the 
point  which,  as  closely  as  they  could  figure  it, 
was  about  where  the  Lewis  and  Clark  bateau 
lay  at  the  time  George  Shannon  was  found 
wandering  on  the  Plains,  alone  and  ready  to 
despair.  This  was  about  thirty  miles  below  the 
mouth  of  the  White  River. 

"Well,  we've  got  him,"  said  Jesse,  solemnly, 
"and  told  him  never  to  leave  camp  without 
matches  and  ammunition  and  an  ax.  And 
that's  that!" 

"Time  for  another  catfish,  Jesse,"  said  their 
leader.  "John,  you  take  the  .22  and  wander 
along  the  edge  of  the  bluff.  You  might  see  a 
young  jack  rabbit.  I  don't  believe  I'd  bother 
the  ducks,  for  that's  against  the  law  and  we 
don't  break  laws  even  when  we  are  not  watched. 
Rob,  you  and  I  will  make  camp — we'll  not  need 
anything  but  the  mosquito  bars." 

Inside  the  hour  a  shout  from  Jesse  informed 
them  that  he  had  another  catfish  on  his  throw 
line,  and  soon  he  had  it  flopping  on  the  sand. 
He  killed  it  stone  dead  by  thrusting  a  stiff 

1 02 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

straw  back  into  the  brain  through  the  "little 
hole  in  its  face,"  as  he  called  the  sinus  which 
leads  into  the  head  cavity. 

"I  throw  out  my  line,"  said  he,  "with  a  piece 
of  meat  or  minnow  on  the  hook.  Then  I  stick 
a  stick  down  in  the  bank,  two  or  three  feet 
long,  and  take  a  half  hitch  around  the  top.  It 
acts  as  a  sort  of  rod  and  gives  when  the  fish 
bites.  He  pulls  down  and  swallows  the  bait, 
and  the  spring  of  the  stick  holds  him  safer 
than  a  straight  pull  would.  To  skin  him,  I 
cut  around  back  of  his  front  side  fins  and  take 
hold  of  the  skin  with  my  pliers — just  slit  the 
hide  a  little  down  the  sides,  and  it  comes  off. 
These  channel  cats  aren't  bad  to  eat." 

John  joined  them  before  dark,  with  two  half- 
grown  jack  rabbits  which  he  had  found  on  the 
bluffs  below.  He  spoke  of  the  fine  view  and  of 
the  splendid  sunset  he  had  seen.  Rob  was  exam- 
ining the  rabbits,  each  of  which  had  been  shot 
squarely  through  the  eye.  "Dead-shot  John, 
the  old  trapper!"  said  he.  "That's  the  way!" 

"You  didn't  think  I'd  shoot  'em  anywhere 
but  through  the  head,  did  you?"  John  inquired. 
"No  sir,  not  yet!" 

So,  with  meat  in  camp,  they  sat  down,  still 
in  "verry  good  sperits,"  as  John  quoted  from 
the  Journal. 

103 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

Now  day  after  day,  hurrying  hard  as  they 
could,  they  still  drove  on  northward,  along  the 
great  bends  of  what  began  to  seem  an  inter- 
minable waterway.  One  bend,  they  fancied, 
they  surely  identified  with  the  one  mentioned 
in  the  Journal,  which  then  was  thirty  miles 
around  and  not  much  over  a  half  a  mile  across 
the  neck.  They  reflected  that  in  more  than  a 
hundred  years  the  great  river  in  all  likelihood 
had  cut  through  what  Clark  called  the  "Narost 
part,"  the  necks  of  dozens  of  such  bends.  On 
the  map  they  identified  the  Rosebud  Indian 
Reservation  to  the  west.  The  great  Plains 
country  into  which  they  now  were  advancing 
seemed  wild,  lonely,  and  at  times  forbidding, 
and  the  settlements  farther  and  farther  apart. 
They  were  in  cattle  country  rather  than  farm- 
ing country  much  of  the  time. 

The  Journal  brought  up  the  second  great 
Sioux  council  of  Lewis  and  Clark,  on  the 
"Teton  river" — near  Pierre,  South  Dakota — on 
the  date  of  September  25th ;  but  so  faithful  had 
the  motive  power  of  the  good  ship  Adventurer 
proved,  that  our  party  pulled  into  the  most 
suitable  camping  spot  they  could  find  not  too 
near  by,  around  noon  of  June  13th. 

"Can't  complain,"  said  Rob,  taking  off  his 
grease-spattered  overalls  and  wiping  his  hands 

104 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

on  a  bit  of  waste.  "We've  slipped  a  day  on 
our  schedule,  but  from  what  we  now  know 
of  this  little  old  river,  we  are  mighty  lucky  to 
be  here  and  not  down  by  Council  Bluffs,  or 
maybe  Kansas  City!  It's  only  a  little  over 
three  hundred  miles  now  to  the  Mandans. 
That's  as  far  ahead  as  I  can  think." 

"And  as  to  rowing  and  paddling  and  poling 
and  tracking  her  this  far,"  added  John,  "say, 
twelve  hundred  miles  from  the  mouth  of  the 
Missouri — whew!  It  makes  my  back  ache. 
Seems  to  me  we've  skipped  along." 

"Well,  why  shouldn't  we?"  demanded  Jesse. 
"Those  fellows  had  the  finest  kind  of  hunting 
in  the  world;  over  a  thousand  of  miles  of  it, 
to  here — over  four  thousand  miles  of  it  alto- 
gether— not  a  single  day  that  didn't  have  some 
sport  in  it,  and  they  killed  tons  and  tons  of 
game.  But  all  that  is  left  for  us  is  water  and 
sand  and  willows.  Ducks  and  grouse,  yes,  but 
we  can't  shoot  'em.  And  I've  got  so  I  don't 
crave  to  look  a  catfish  in  the  face." 

Uncle  Dick  looked  at  the  boys  gravely  and 
saw  that  the  monotony  of  the  long  voyage  was 
beginning  to  wear  on  them. 

"Stick  her  through  to  the  Mandans,  fellows," 
said  he.  "We'll  see  what  we'll  see.  But  Jesse, 
how  can  you  complain  of  being  bored  when 

105 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

right  now  you  are  standing  where  Will  Clark 
come  pretty  near  being  killed  by  the  Teton 
Sioux? 

"Yes,  sir,  it  was  right  here  that  they  tried 
to  stop  him  from  going  back  to  the  big  boat. 
Then,  for  the  first  time,  the  Redhead  Chief 
drew  his  sword — they  always  went  into  uni- 
form when  they  had  a  council  on — and  Lewis 
and  the  men  on  the  boat  trained  the  swivel 
gun  on  the  band  of  Sioux  who  were  detaining 
Clark. 

"You  see,  they  had  the  council  awning 
stretched  on  a  sand  bar  in  the  mouth  of  the 
river,  and  the  bateau  was  seventy  yards  off, 
anchored.  They  had  sent  out  for  the  Sioux 
to  come  in,  had  smoked  with  them,  given  them 
provisions,  made  speeches  to  them,  given  them 
whisky  and  tobacco.  The  Sioux  were  arro- 
gant, wanted  more  whisky  and  tobacco,  and 
when  Clark  came  ashore  with  only  five  men 
they  tried  to  hold  him  up,  grabbing  the  boat 
painter  and  pulling  their  bows.  The  second 
chief,  says  Clark,  was  bad,  'his  justures  were 
of  such  a  personal  nature  I  felt  Myself  Com- 
peled  to  Draw  my  Sword.  ...  I  felt  Myself 
Warm  and  Spoke  in  verry  positive  terms/ 
Which  is  all  he  says  of  a  very  dangerous 
scrape." 

106 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"Whyn't  they  bust  into  'em  with  the  swivel 
gun?"  demanded  Jesse.  "At  seventy  yards 
they'd  'a'  got  plenty  of  'em." 

"Sure  they  would.  And  then  maybe  the 
Sioux  would  never  have  let  them  through  at 
all  and  would  have  shot  into  every  boat  of 
white  men  that  later  came  up  the  river.  No, 
those  young  men  showed  courage  and  good 
judgment  both.  They  did  not  know  fear,  but 
they  did  not  forget  duty,  and  they  were  there 
to  make  peace  among  all  the  tribes  along  the 
Missouri. 

"President  Jefferson  knew  that  country 
would  soon  be  visited  by  many  of  our  fur 
traders,  and  he  didn't  want  the  boats  stopped. 
Lewis  and  Clark  both  knew  this." 

"But  the  Sioux  didn't  bluff  them,"  said  Rob, 
"because  Lewis  went  ashore  with  only  five  men, 
in  his  turn,  and  then  they  all  pulled  off  a  dance, 
and  a  big  talk  in  a  big  council  tent — it  must 
have  been  big,  for  there  were  seventy  Sioux 
in  it,  and  just  those  two  young  American  offi- 
cers. The  big  pipe  was  on  forked  sticks  in 
front  of  the  chief,  and  under  it  they  had 
sprinkled  swan's-down,  and  they  all  were 
dressed  up  to  their  limit.  And  though 
they  could  have  been  killed  any  minute, 
these  two  white  men  had  that  lot  of  Indians 
8  107 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

feeding  from  the  hand,  as  the  slang  goes, 
Uncle  Dick . !" 

Uncle  Dick  nodded,  and  Rob  went  on,  refer- 
ring to  his  Journal.  "And  then  the  big  chief 
said  what  they  had  done  was  O.K.,  and  asked 
the  white  men  to  'take  pity  on  them' — which  I 
think  is  an  old  Indian  term  of  asking  for  some 
more  gifts.  Anyhow,  the  upshot  was  they 
smoked  the  peace  pipe  and  ate  'some  of  the 
most  Delicate  parts  of  the  Dog  which  was  pre- 
pared for  the  fiest  and  made  a  Sacrefise  to 
the  flag/  Then  they  cleared  away  the  floor, 
built  up  a  fire  in  the  lodge,  and  'about  10 
Musitions  began  playing  on  Tambereens' — 
which  made  a  'gingling  noise.'  The  women 
came  in  and  danced,  with  staffs  decorated  with 
scalps,  and  everybody  sang  and  everybody 
promised  to  be  good." 

"Some  party !"  said  Jesse,  slangily ;  but  Rob, 
now  excited,  went  on  with  the  story: 

"Poor  Clark  nearly  got  sick  from  lack  of 
sleep.  But  the  next  day  the  Sioux  held  on  to 
the  cable  again  and  wanted  to  stop  the  boat  till 
they  had  more  tobacco.  Then  Lewis  told  the 
chiefs  they  couldn't  bluff  him  into  giving  them 
anything.  Clark  did  give  them  a  little  tobacco 
and  told  the  men  not  to  fire  the  swivel.  Then 
they  ran  up  a  red  flag  under  the  white,  and  the 

108 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

next  Sioux  that  came  aboard  they  told  that 
those  two  flags  meant  peace  or  war,  either  way 
they  wanted  it,  and  if  they  wanted  peace,  they'd 
all  better  go  back  home  and  stay  there,  and  not 
monkey  with  the  buzz  saw  too  long — well,  you 
know,  Uncle  Dick,  they  didn't  really  say  that, 
but  that  was  what  they  meant. 

"The  Sioux  followed  alongshore  and  begged 
tobacco  for  fifty  miles,  clean  up  to  the  Ree  vil- 
lages, near  the  mouth  of  the  Cheyenne  River. 
Oh,  they  found  the  Sioux,  all  right ;  and  glad 
enough  they  were  to  get  through  them,  even 
paying  tribute  as  they  had  done." 

"That's  a  fair  statement  of  the  Teton  affair," 
nodded  the  leader  of  the  party.  "Many  a  white 
life  that  tribe  took,  in  the  seventy-five  years 
that  were  to  follow.  For  the  next  hundred 
miles  there  were  either  Sioux  or  Rees  pestering 
and  begging  and  keeping  the  party  uneasy  all 
the  time." 

"And  I'll  bet  they  were  glad  to  get  to  the 
Rees,  too,"  commented  John.  "Those  half- 
Pawnees  raised  squashes,  corn,  and  beans. 
But  by  now,  if  they  had  had  a  good  shotgun  or 
so  along,  they  could  have  killed  all  sorts  of 
swans,  brant  and  other  geese,  and  ducks,  for 
they  were  running  into  the  fall  migration  of 
the  wild  fowl.  Grouse,  too,  were  mentioned 

109 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

as  very  numerous.  They  stuck  to  big  game — 
it  was  easy  to  get  meat  when  you  could  see  a 
'gang  of  goats' — antelope — swimming  the 
river,  and  the  hills  covered  with  game." 

"Uncle  Dick,"  resumed  Rob,  as  they  again 
gathered  around  the  map  and  Journal  spread 
down  on  the  tent  floor,  "those  men  must  have 
had  some  notion  of  the  country,  even  had  some 
map  of  it." 

"Yes,  they  had  a  map — made  by  one  Evans, 
the  best  then  to  be  had,  and  I  suppose  made  up 
from  the  fur  traders'  stories.  But  it  was  in- 
complete. Even  to-day  few  maps  are  any- 
where near  exactly  accurate.  For  instance, 
when  they  came  to  the  Cheyenne  River — which, 
of  course,  the  traders  called  the  Chien,  or  Dog, 
River — Clark  said  that  nothing  was  known  of 
it  till  a  certain  Jean  Valle  told  them  that  it 
headed  in  the  Black  Hills. 

"Of  course,  it's  all  easy  now.  We  know  the 
Black  Hills  are  in  the  southwest  corner  of 
South  Dakota,  and  that  the  Belle  Fourche 
River  of  the  old  cow  country  runs  into  the 
Cheyenne,  which  flows  almost  east,  into  the 
Missouri.  But  if  Mr.  Valle  had  not  been  out 
to  the  Black  Hills,  Lewis  and  Clark  would  not 
have  been  able  to  give  this  information.  Then, 
again,  while  they  were  at  the  Ree  village,  on 

no 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

October  10th,  two  more  Frenchmen  came  to 
breakfast,  'Mr.  Tabo  and  Mr.  Gravolin/  who 
were  already  in  this  country. 

"To  me,  one  of  the  most  interesting  things 
is  to  see  the  overlapping  and  blending  of  all 
these  things — how  the  turkey  once  overlapped 
the  antelope  and  prairie  dog;  how  the  Rees, 
who  were  only  scattered  branches  of  the  Paw- 
nees, properly  at  home  away  down  in  Kansas 
— overlapped  the  Sioux,  who  sometimes  raided 
the  Pawnees  below  the  Platte. 

"And  these  French  traders  said  the  Span- 
iards sometimes  came  to  the  mouth  of  the  Kaw 
River,  and  even  on  the  Platte.  So  there  we 
were,  overlapping  Spain  to  the  west.  And  up 
above,  Great  Britain  was  overlapping  our 
claims  to  the  valley  of  the  Columbia  and  even 
part  of  this  Missouri  Valley.  You  can  see 
how  important  this  journey  was. 

"You'll  remember  the  lower  Brule  Sioux 
Reservation,  below  us  and  west  of  the  river. 
The  Cheyenne  Reservation  is  in  above  here, 
below  the  mouth  of  the  Cheyenne  River.  From 
there  the  river  takes  a  pretty  straight  shoot  up 
into  North  Dakota.  A  great  game  country, 
a  wild  cow  country,  and  now  a  quiet  farming 
country.  A  bleak,  snow-covered,  wind-swept 
waste  it  then  was.  And  it  was  winter  that 

in 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

first  stopped  that  long,  slow,  steady,  tireless 
advance  of  the  'Corps  of  Vollenteers.' " 

"I  see  they  broke  one  more  private  before 
they  got  to  the  Mandans,"  said  John,  running 
ahead  in  the  pages  of  the  book. 

"Yes,  that  was  Newman,  who  had  been  found 
guilty  of  mutinous  expressions.  Seventy-five 
lashes  and  expulsion  from  the  Volunteers  was 
what  the  court  of  nine  men  gave  him.  They 
always  were  dignified,  and  they  enforced  re- 
spect from  whites  and  Indians  alike." 

"Well,"  grumbled  Jesse,  "it  looks  to  me  like 
there  had  been  a  whole  lot  of  people  wander- 
ing around  across  this  country  long  before 
Lewis  and  Clark  got  here." 

"Right  you  are,  my  boy.  The  truth  is  that 
right  across  these  Plains  there  went  west  the 
first  American  exploring  expedition  that  ever 
saw  the  Rockies.  The  French  nobleman  Ver- 
endrye,  his  three  sons,  and  a  nephew,  not  to 
mention  quite  a  band  of  Indians,  started  west 
across  from  the  Mandan  country  in  1742.  On 
January  1,  1743,  he  records  his  first  sight  of 
the  Rocky  Mountains,  which  he  calls  the  Shin- 
ing Mountains — a  fine  name  it  is  for  them,  too. 

"The  Verendrye  expedition  was  the  first  to 
cross  Wyoming  or  the  Dakotas  so  far  in  the 
west.  They  came  back  through  the  Bad  Lands, 

112 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

above  here,  and  Verendrye  records  in  his  jour- 
nal that  near  a  fort  of  the  Arikara  Indians  he 
buried  a  plate  of  lead,  with  the  arms  and  in- 
scription of  the  king.  He  did  this  in  March, 
1743.  It  always  was  supposed  that  this  was  at 
or  near  Fort  Pierre,  South  Dakota.  That  sus- 
picion was  absolutely  correct. 

"In  a  little  railway  pamphlet  put  out  by  the 
Northern  Pacific  Railway  it  is  stated  that  on 
Sunday,  February  16,  1913 — one  hundred  and 
seventy  years  after  Verendrye  got  back  that 
far  east — a  school  girl  playing  with  some  others 
at  the  top  of  a  hill  scraped  the  dirt  from  the 
end  of  a  plate,  which  then  was  exposed  about 
an  inch  above  the  ground.  She  pulled  it  out. 
The  story  said  it  looked  like  a  range-stove  lin- 
ing. It  was  eight  and  a  half  inches  long  by 
six  and  a  half  inches  wide  and  an  eighth  of  an 
inch  in  thickness.  Well,  it  was  discovered  to 
be  the  old  Verendrye  lead  plate— that's  all!" 

"That's  a  most  extraordinary  thing!"  said 
Rob.  "Well,  anyhow,  it  shows  the  value  of 
leaving  exploring  records.  So  you  couldn't 
blame  William  Clark  for  writing  his  name 
at  least  twice  on  the  rocks." 

"No,  the  story  of  the  Verendrye  plate  is,  I 
think,  one  of  the  most  curious  things  I  have 
ever  read  in  regard  to  early  Western  history. 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

You  never  can  tell  about  such  things.  Well,  in 
any  case  Verendrye,  the  first  white  man  who 
ever  saw  the  Shining  Mountains,  died  in  1749, 
That  was  fifty-five  years  before  Lewis  and 
Clark  started  up  the  river. 

"There  is  not  a  hundred  miles,  or  ten  miles, 
or  one  mile,  along  all  these  shores  which  has 
not  historical  value  if  you  and  I  only  knew  the 
story.'1 

"But  it's  a  long,  long  way  up  to  the  Mandans 
still,"  began  John  once  more. 

His  Uncle  Dick  gayly  chided  him. 

"It'll  not  be  so  long — only  a  little  over  three 
hundred  miles  from  here." 

"If  only  there  were  the  buffalo!"  said  Jesse. 

"Yes,  if  only  there  were  the  buffalo,  and  the 
antelope  and  the  Indians !  I'd  give  a  good  deal 
to  have  lived  in  those  days,  my  own  self.  Good 
night,  Jess.  Good  night,  Rob  and  Frank." 


CHAPTER  XIV 

IN  DAYS  OF  OLD 

THE  young  travelers  each  night  made  their 
beds  carefully,  for  they  long  since  had 
learned  that  unless  a  man  sleeps  well  he  can- 
not enjoy  the  next  day's  work.  It  has  been 
noted  that  they  had  three  buffalo  robes  for 
part  of  their  bedding,  one  each  for  Uncle  Dick 
and  Rob,  while  John  and  Jesse  shared  one  be- 
tween them.  In  the  morning  Uncle  Dick  noted 
that  the  latter  two  boys  had  their  robe  spread 
down  with  the  hair  side  up. 

"I  suppose  you  did  that  to  get  more  of  a 
mattress  ?"  he  said.  "But  suppose  you  wanted 
to  keep  warm  in  really  cold  weather,  in  a  snow- 
storm, say.  Which  side  of  the  robe  would  you 
wear  outside?" 

"Why,  the  smooth  side,  of  course!"  replied 
Jesse,  who  was  rolling  the  robe.  "That'd  have 
the  warm  fur  next  to  you,  so  you'd  be  warmer 
that  way." 

"No,  there's  where  you  are  wrong,"  said  his 
uncle.  "The  old-timers  always  slept  with  the 
hair  outside,  and  the  Indians  wore  their  robes 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

that  way.  'Buffalo  know  how  to  wear  his 
hide!'  is  the  way  an  Indian  put  it.  And,  you 
see,  a  buffalo  always  did  wear  his  hair  outside ! 
Next  to  the  musk  ox,  he  was  the  hardiest 
animal  on  this  continent  and  could  stand  the 
most  cold.  No  blizzards  on  these  plains  ever 
troubled  him.  He  could  get  feed  when  other 
animals  starved." 

"He'd  paw  down  through  the  snow  to  the 
grass,"  said  Jesse. 

"Again  you  are  wrong.  A  horse  paws  snow. 
The  buffalo  threw  the  snow  aside  with  his 
hairy  jaws  or  his  whole  head — he  rooted  for 
the  grass !" 

"Well,  I  didn't  know  that." 

"A  good  many  things  are  now  forgotten," 
said  his  friend.  "Writers  and  artists  and  even 
scientists  quite  often  are  wrong.  For  instance, 
in  pictures  you  almost  always  see  the  herd  led 
by  the  biggest  buffalo  bull.  In  actual  fact  it 
was  always  an  old  cow  that  led  the  herd.  The 
bulls  usually  were  at  the  rear,  to  defend  against 
wolves.  And  when  a  buffalo  ran,  he  ran  into 
the  wind,  not  downwind,  like  the  deer.  Few 
remember  that  now. 

"Take  the  antelope,  too.  The  old  hunters 
always  knew  that  the  antelope  shed  his  horns, 
same  as  a  deer,  but  scientists  denied  that  for 

116 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

years,  because  they  didn't  happen  to  see  any 
shed  horns.  I  have  had  an  antelope  buck's  horn 
pull  off  in  my  hand,  in  the  month  of  May,  and 
it  left  the  soft  core  exposed,  covered  with  coarse 
black  filaments  like  black  hairs.  Naturally,  in 
the  fall,  at  the  time  Lewis  and  Clark  got  their 
'goat/  as  they  called  the  antelope,  the  horns 
were  on  tight,  so  they  supposed  they  didn't  shed. 

"They  sent  President  Jefferson  specimens  of 
the  new  animals  they  found — the  antelope, 
prairie  dog,  prairie  badger,  magpie,  bighorn, 
and  a  grizzly  hide  or  so.  They  got  their  four 
bighorn  heads  at  the  Mandans,  none  very  large, 
though  'two  feet  long  and  four  inches  diameter* 
seemed  big  to  them.  And  I  shouldn't  wonder 
if  those  horns  could  have  been  pulled  off  the 
pith  after  they  got  good  and  dry.  The  horns 
of  the  bighorn  will  dry  out  and  lose  at  least  ten 
per  cent  of  their  measurement,  in  a  few  years' 
hanging  on  a  wall.  I  have  had  a  bighorn's 
curly  horn  come  off  the  pith  in  rough  handling 
three  or  four  years  after  it  was  killed ;  but  of 
course  the  horns  never  were  shed  in  life." 

"Did  they  get  them  along  the  Missouri?" 
asked  Jesse,  now. 

"Not  until  they  got  above  the  mouth  of  the 
Yellowstone.  There  they  killed  a  lot  of  them." 

"They  saw  one  big  grizzly  track  before  they 
117 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

got  to  the  Mandans,"  said  Rob,  who  was 
listening. 

|  "Oh  yes — that  might  have  been.  Alexander 
Henry  the  younger  tells  us  of  grizzlies  in 
northern  Minnesota  in  early  days.  In  all  the 
range  country  along  the  Missouri  from  lower 
South  Dakota  the  grizzly  used  to  range,  and 
he  was  on  the  Plains  all  the  way  to  the  Rockies, 
and  from  Alaska  to  New  Mexico  and  Utah,  as 
I  can  personally  testify.  Just  how  far  south 
he  ran  in  here  I  don't  know — some  think  as  far 
south  as  upper  Iowa,  but  we  can't  tell.  He 
couldn't  do  much  with  deer  and  antelope,  and 
worked  more  on  elk  and  buffalo,  when  it  came 
to  big  meat.  He'd  dig  out  mice  and  eat  crickets, 
though,  as  well. 

"Yes,  he'd  been  all  along  this  country,  I'm 
sure. 

"But  Lewis  and  Clark  didn't  really  kill  any 
grizzlies  until  they  got  above  the  Yellowstone — 
and  then  they  certainly  got  among  them.  Gass 
records  sixteen  grizzlies  met  with  between  the 
Yellowstone  and  the  Great  Falls  of  the  Missouri. 
He  usually  calls  them  'brown  bears,'  which 
shows  the  great  color  range  of  the  grizzly. 
Lewis  and  the  others  call  them  'white  bears.' 
The  typical  grizzly  had  a  light-yellowish  coat, 
often  dark  underneath. 

118 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"Of  course,  color  has  nothing  to  do  with  it. 
I've  seen  them  almost  black.  The  silvertip  is 
a  grizzly.  The  giant  California  bear  was  a 
grizzly.  The  great  Kadiak  bears  which  you 
boys  saw  were  grizzlies  of  a  different  habitat. 
I've  seen  a  grizzly  with  a  hide  almost  red.  But 
of  course  you  know  that  the  'cinnamon  bear' 
is  practically  always  a  black  bear ;  and  a  black 
bear  mother  may  have  two  cubs,  one  red  and 
one  quite  black. 

"Scientists  try  to  establish  a  dozen  or  two 
'species'  of  bears — even  making  different 
'species'  of  the  black  bears  of  the  southern 
Mississippi  bottoms — Arkansas,  Louisiana, 
etc. — and  I  don't  know  how  many  sorts  of 
'blue  bears'  and  'straw  bears,'  'glacier  bears,' 
etc.,  among  the  grizzlies.  Of  course,  bears 
differ,  just  as  men  do.  But  the  one  thing 
which  remains  constant  is  the  length  of  the 
claws,  or  front  toe  nails — what  the  Journal 
calls  their  'talons.'  In  a  black  bear  these  are 
always  short.  In  a  grizzly  they  are  always 
long — they  get  them  up  to  four  and  one-half 
inches,  and  I  believe  some  of  your  Kadiaks 
have  even  longer  claws.  Colors  grade,  but 
claws  don't.  I  even  think  the  polar  bear  is  a 
grizzly  of  the  North — white  because  he  lives 
on  snow  and  ice,  and  with  a  snaky  head 

119 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

because  he  has  to  swim.  But  his  claws  he 
needed  and  kept. 

"The  long-clawed  bears  were  all  predatory ; 
the  short-clawed  ones  never  were.  Not  long 
ago  I  read  a  magazine  story  about  a  black  bear 
which  killed  a  moose  with  seven-foot  horns. 
There  never  was  a  black  bear  ever  killed  any 
moose,  and  there  never  was  any  moose  with 
horns  that  wide.  Such  things  are  nonsense — 
like  a  great  part  of  the  magazine  animal 
fiction." 

Rob  was  interested.  "Too  bad  they've 
trapped  off  about  all  the  grizzlies,"  he  said  now. 
"I've  tried  a  lot  of  kinds  of  sport,  and  of  them 
all,  I  like  grizzly  hunting,  quail  shooting,  and 
fly  fishing  for  trout." 

"Not  a  bad  selection !  Well,  the  first  is  hard 
to  get  now.  The  grizzly  is  closer  to  extinction 
than  the  elk  or  the  buffalo,  for  the  buffalo 
breed  in  domestic  life,  and  the  grizzly — well, 
he  hasn't  domesticated  yet.  He's  the  one  sav- 
age— he  and  the  gray  wolf — that  would  never 
civilize.  And  he's  gone." 

"But,  Uncle  Dick,  those  bears  must  have 
been  a  different  species  from  grizzlies  nowa- 
days. Look  how  they  fought?  Even  Lewis 
came  near  being  killed  by  them  more  than 


once." 


1 20 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"Yes,  they'd  fight,  in  those  days,  for  they 
were  bigger  and  bolder,  and  they  had  not  yet 
learned  fear  of  the  rifle.  You  must  remember 
that  while,  in  this  country  up  to  the  Mandans, 
the  early  traders  had  been  ahead  of  Lewis  and 
Clark,  above  the  Yellowstone  no  white  man 
ever  had  gone.  Those  bears  thought  a  white 
man  was  something  good  to  eat,  and  they 
offered  to  eat  him. 

"Their  rifles  were  muzzle  loaders — I Ve  often 
and  often  tried  to  find  just  the  size  ball  they 
used,  but  I  can't  find  such  exact  mention  of 
their  weapons — but  they  were  light  and  ineffi- 
cient single-shot  rifles,  as  we  now  look  at  it, 
even  in  the  hands  of  exact  riflemen,  as  all  those 
men  were.  So  the  grizzlies  jumped  them. 
They  shot  one  sixteen  times.  Lewis  had  to 
jump  in  the  river  to  escape  from  one.  Oh, 
they  had  merry  times  in  those  days,  when  griz- 
zlies were  regular  fellows !" 

John  nearly  always  had  precise  facts  at  hand. 
He  now  found  his  copy  of  the  little  journal  of 
Patrick  Gass.  "Here's  how  big  one  was,"  he 
said.  "Gass  calls  it  a  Very  large  brown  bear,' 
and  it  measured  three  feet  five  inches  around 
the  head,  three  feet  eleven  inches  around  the 
neck,  five  feet  ten  and  one-half  inches  around 
the  breast.  His  foreleg  was  twenty-three 

121 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

inches  around,  and  his  talons  were  four  and 
three-eighths  inches.  He  was  eight  feet  seven 
and  one-half  inches  long." 

"That  was  a  big  grizzly"  Uncle  Dick 
nodded,  "a  very  big  one,  for  this  latitude.  The 
biggest  silvertip  grizzly  I  ever  knew  in  Mon- 
tana weighed  nine  hundred  pounds.  But  they 
were  bigger  in  California  and  all  up  the  Pacific 
coast — trees  and  bears  grew  bigger  there,  for 
some  reason.  You  boys  have  killed  Kadiaks 
as  big  as  this  Gass  grizzly.  But  you  didn't 
do  it  with  a  flintlock,  small-bore,  muzzle  loader, 
fair  stand-up  fight.  And  your  Kadiak  bear 
would  run  when  it  saw  you — so  would  a  Lewis 
and  Clark  grizzly;  only  it  would  run  toward 
you!  Six  men  of  them  went  out  after  one  of 
them  and  wounded  it,  and  it  almost  got  the  lot 
of  them.  Another  time  a  grizzly  chased  a  man 
down  a  bank  into  the  river — bad  actors,  those 
grizzlies,  in  those  times." 

John  looked  at  his  watch.  "Getting  late, 
folks,"  said  he.  "On  our  way?" 

"On  our  way !"  And  in  a  few  moments  the 
Adventurer  had  her  load  aboard. 

"You  will  now  notice  the  Sioux  running 
along  the  bank,"  said  John,  "trailing  the  boat, 
shooting  ahead  of  it,  threatening  to  stop  it, 
begging  tobacco,  asking  for  a  ride — all  sorts 

122 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

of  a  nuisance.  But  we  spread  the  square  sail, 
set  out,  and  proceeded  on !" 

In  fact,  so  well  had  they  cast  out  ahead,  as 
usual,  the  nature  of  the  country  into  which  they 
were  coming,  and  so  well  had  they  studied  its 
history,  that  it  needs  not  tell  their  daily  journey 
among  the  great  bluffs,  the  wide  bars,  and  the 
willow-lined  shores  of  the  great  river. 

Gradually,  the  course  of  the  river  being  now 
more  nearly  to  the  north,  they  noted  the  higher 
and  bleaker  aspect  of  the  Plains,  which  the 
Journal  described  as  land  not  so  good  as  that 
below  the  Platte.  Of  the  really  arid  country 
farther  west,  and  of  the  uses  of  irrigation,  the 
Journal  knew  little,  and  spoke  of  it  as  a  desert, 
though  now,  on  the  edge  of  the  river,  the  cling- 
ing towns  and  the  great  ranch  country  back 
of  them,  with  the  green  fields  of  farms  and  the 
smokes  of  not  infrequent  homes,  warned  them 
that  the  past  was  gone  and  that  now  another 
day  and  land  lay  before  them. 

After  many  misadventures  among  the  count- 
less deceiving  channels  and  bars  of  the  river, 
and  after  locating  the  several  Indian  villages 
of  the  past  and  of  to-day — the  Rees,  the  Sioux 
bands,  the  Cheyennes — they  did  at  last  cross 
the  North  Dakota  line  at  the  Standing  Rock 
agency,  did  pass  the  mouths  of  the  Cannon 
a  123 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

Ball  and  Heart  Rivers,  and  raise  the  smokes 
of  Bismarck  on  the  right,  and  Mandan  on  the 
left  bank,  with  the  great  connecting  railway 
bridge.  They  drove  on,  and  at  length  chose 
their  stopping  place  below  Mandan,  on  the  west 
shore. 

Now,  as  always  at  the  river  towns  they  had 
passed,  they  met  many  curious  and  inquisitive 
persons,  eager  to  know  who  they  were,  where 
they  were  going,  whence  they  had  come,  and 
how  long  they  had  been  on  the  way. 

"Well,  sir,"  said  Rob  to  one  newspaperman 
who  drove  up  to  their  little  encampment  the 
next  morning,  in  pursuit  of  a  rumor  he  had 
heard  that  the  boat  had  ascended  the  river  from 
its  mouth,  "since  you  ask  us,  we  are  the  perogue 
Adventurer,  Company  of  Volunteers  for 
Northwestern  Discovery,  under  Captains  Meri- 
wether  Lewis  and  William  Clark.  We  are  in 
search  of  winter  quarters,  and  we  hope  the 
natives  are  peaceful.  We  have  been,  to  this 
landing,  just  forty-nine  days,  five  hours  and 
thirty-five  minutes,  this  second  day  of  July." 

"But  that's  impossible!  Why,  it's  over  a 
thousand  miles  from  here  to  St.  Louis  by 
water !"  remarked  the  editor,  himself  a  middle- 
aged  man. 

"Would  you  say  so,  sir?" 
124 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"Well,  how  far  is  it?" 

"You  should  know,  sir ;  you  live  here." 

"But  I  never  had  any  occasion  to  know  or 
to  care,"  smiled  the  visitor. 

Rob  smiled  also.  "Well,  sir,  according  to 
Patrick  Gass " 

"I  never  heard  of  him " 

" who  kept  track  of  it  a  hundred  and 

seventeen  years  ago,  it's  about  sixteen  hundred 
and  ten  miles,  though  we  don't  figure  it  quite 
sixteen  hundred.  Call  it  fourteen  hundred  and 
fifty-two,  as  the  river  chart  does." 

"Jerusalem!  And  you  say  you  made  it  in 
forty-nine  days?  Why,  that's — how  many 
miles  a  day?" 

"Well,  we  set  out  to  do  over  forty  miles  a 
day,  but  we  couldn't  quite  make  it.  We  ran 
against  a  good  many  things." 

"And  broke  all  known  and  existing  records 
at  that,  I'll  bet  a  hat !  How  on  earth !" 

"Well,  you  see,  sir,"  Rob  went  on,  politely, 
"we've  rigged  a  double  outboard,  with  an  ex- 
tension bed  on  the  stern.  They're  specially 
made  'for  us  and  they're  powerful  kickers.  In 
fair  water  and  all  going  good,  they'll  do  six 
and  eight  an  hour,  with  auxiliary  sail ;  and  we 
traveled  ten  hours  nearly  every  day.  But  then, 
it  wasn't  always  what  you'd  call  fair  water." 

125 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"At  least,  we  got  here  for  the  Fourth,"  he 
added.  "We  began  to  think,  down  by  the 
Cannon  Ball,  that  we  wouldn't.  We  planned  to 
spend  the  Fourth  among  the  Mandans." 

"If  there's  ice  cream,"  interrupted  Jesse. 

"Ice  cream?"  The  visitor  turned  to  Uncle 
Dick,  who  sat  smiling.  "All  you  want,  and 
won't  cost  you  a  cent!  Come  on  up  to  my 
house,  won't  you,  and  spend  the  night  ?  Have 
you  got  all  the  eggs  and  butter  and  bread  and 
fruit  you  want — oranges,  lemons,  melons  ?" 

"Of  melons  we  got  quite  a  lot  at  the  upper 
Arikaree  village,"  said  Rob,  solemnly.  "But 
oranges — and  ice  cream — they  didn't  have 
those!" 

Uncle  Dick  joined  their  visitor  in  a  hearty 
laugh.  "These  chaps  are  great  for  making 
believe,"  said  he.  "We're  crossing  on  the  old 
Lewis  and  Clark  trail,  as  nearly  as  we  can. 
We're  going  to  the  head  of  the  Missouri  River, 
and  my  young  friends  are  trying  to  restore  the 
life  of  the  old  days  as  they  go  along." 

"Fine!  I  wish  more  would  do  so.  I'm  ig- 
norant, myself,  but  I'm  going  to  be  less  so. 
An  idea,  sir !" 

"Well,"  he  continued,  "you'll  have  to  come 
up  to  town  and  stop  with  me.  I'll  get  a  man 
to  watch  your  boat — not  that  I  think  it  would 

126 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

need  much  watching.  You'll  be  here  over  the 
Fourth,  at  least?" 

"Oh,  yes/'  replied  Uncle  Dick,  now  intro- 
ducing himself,  "we're  ready  to  take  a  little  rest 
and  look  around  a  little  among  the  Mandans ! 
Can  you  show  us  where  the  old  Lewis  and 
Clark  winter  quarters  were?" 

"Sure!  To-morrow  we  can  steam  on  up  to 
that  place,  and  also  the  site  of  old  Fort  Clark. 
Then  I'll  show  you  around  among  the  painted 
savages  of  our  city !" 

They  all  laughed,  and  after  pulling  up  the 
boat,  drawing  tight  the  tent  flaps,  and  spread- 
ing the  tarpaulin  over  the  cargo,  they  joined 
their  new  friend  in  his  motor  car  and  sped 
off  for  the  town,  where  they  were  made  welcome 
and  obliged  to  tell  in  detail  the  story  of  their 
long  journey. 


CHAPTER  XV 

AMONG  THE  MANDANS 

"TV  7  ELL,"  said  Jesse,  late  the  next  after- 
W  noon,  when,  in  accordance  with  his 
promise,  this  new  friend  had  pointed  out  the 
place  where,  the  expert  investigators  usually 
agreed,  the  explorers  built  their  winter  quar- 
ters in  the  year  1804 — near  the  plot  called  Elm 
Point,  even  now  heavily  timbered.  "I  don't 
see  much  of  a  fort  left  here  now.  What's  be- 
come of  it?" 

"What  becomes  of  any  house  built  of  cotton- 
wood  logs  in  ten  or  twenty  years?"  smiled  his 
uncle.  "But  the  Journal  and  other  books  tell 
us  that  here  or  about  here  is  where  the  old 
stockade  once  stood.  It  was  opposite  to  where 
Fort  Clark  later  was  built  in  1831.  You  see, 
Fort  Clark  was  on  the  west  side,  on  a  high  bluff, 
and  in  its  time  quite  a  post,  for  it  was  one  hun- 
dred and  thirty-two  by  one  hundred  and  forty- 
seven  feet  in  size,  and  well  built.  Fort  Clark 
was  about  fifty-five  miles  above  the  North- 
ern Pacific  Railroad  bridge  at  Bismarck,  North 
Dakota.  We've  had  a  good  day's  run  of  it. 

128 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"All  Clark  tells  us  about  Fort  Mandan  is 
that  it  was  on  the  north  bank,  that  the 
ground  was  sandy,  and  that  they  cleared  the 
timber  to  make  room.  He  says  they  had  cotton- 
wood  and  elm  and  some  small  ash,  but  com- 
plains that  the  logs  were  large  and  heavy  and 
they  had  to  carry  them  in  on  hand  spikes,  by 
man  power.  They  used  no  horses  in  rolling 
up  the  logs. 

"But  Patrick  Gass  tells  more  about  the  way 
they  did.  They  had  two  rows  of  cabins,  in  two 
wings,  at  right  angles,  and  each  cabin  had  four 
rooms  in  it.  I  think  the  men  slept  upstairs, 
for  when  the  walls  were  up  seven  feet  they 
laid  a  puncheon  floor,  covered  with  grass  and 
clay,  which  Gass  says  made  'a  warm  loft.'  This 
projected  about  a  foot,  and  a  puncheon  roof 
was  put  over  that. 

"The  outer  wall  was  about  eighteen  feet 
high.  They  had  several  fireplaces.  They  made 
a  couple  of  storerooms  in  the  angle  of  the  two 
wings,  and  then  put  up  their  stockade  in  front, 
to  complete  their  square.  This  stockade  was 
made  of  upright  logs,  and  had  a  gate,  like  most 
of  the  frontier  posts,  so  that,  what  with  their 
swivel  gun  and  all  their  rifles,  they  could  have 
made  quite  a  fight  against  any  sort  of  an  attack, 
although  they  had  no  trouble  of  any  kind. 

129 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"They  were  not  very  far  from  the  Mandan 
villages.  Quite  a  settlement  this  was,  in  these 
parts — not  mentioning  nine  deserted  villages 
inside  of  sixty  miles  below — two  Mandan  vil- 
lages, built  with  the  Mandan  dirt-covered 
lodges,  like  those  of  the  Rees ;  and  besides  that, 
villages  of  Sioux  and  Gros  Ventres,  and  of  a 
band  they  called  the  Watasoons,  and  seventy 
lodges  of  Crees  and  Assiniboines  who  came  in 
later  and  the  fierce  Minnetarees — plenty  of 
savages  to  warrant  the  expedition  in  taking  no 
chances." 

"I've  read  that  the  Indians  at  first  were  not 
so  friendly,"  said  Rob.  "There  were  British 
traders  among  them,  weren't  there?" 

"Oh  yes,  the  Northwest  Fur  Company  was 
in  there,  and  an  Irishman  by  the  name  of 
McCracken  was  on  the  ground  at  the  time. 
Alexander  Henry  got  there  in  1806,  you  know. 
Now,  Lewis  sent  out  a  note  by  McCracken  to 
the  agent  at  Fort  Assiniboine.  Those  traders 
were  none  too  friendly,  arid  tried  to  stir  up 
trouble.  Two  more  of  the  Nor'westers,  La- 
rocque  and  McKenzie,  came  in,  with  an  inter- 
preter and  four  men,  and  the  interpreter, 
LaFrance,  took  it  on  him  to  speak  sneeringly 
of  the  Americans.  It  did  not  take  Captain 
Lewis  long  to  call  him  to  account." 

130 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"Well,  our  fellows  were  up  in  there  all  alone, 
weren't  they?"  exclaimed  Jesse. 

"They  certainly  were,  but  they  held  their 
fort;  and  they  held  all  the  Northwestern 
country  for  us.  As  soon  as  the  Northwest  Fur 
Company  found  out  that  Lewis  and  Clark  in- 
tended to  cross  the  Rockies  to  the  Columbia, 
they  sent  word  East,  and  that  company  sent 
one  of  their  best  men,  Simon  Fraser,  to  ascend 
the  Saskatchewan  and  beat  the  Americans  in 
on  the  Columbia.  But  he  himself  was  beaten 
in  that  great  race  by  about  a  couple  of  years ! 
So  we  forged  the  chain  that  was  to  hold  the 
Oregon  country  to  the  United  States  after- 
ward. Oh  yes,  our  young  captains  had  a  big 
game  to  play,  and  they  played  it  beautifully. 

"They  always  talked  peace  among  these 
Mandans  and  others,  because  they  wanted  the 
Missouri  River  opened  to  the  American  fur 
trade.  They  waited  around,  and  held  talks, 
and  swapped  tobacco  for  corn,  and  the  Ameri- 
can blacksmiths  made  for  them  any  number  of 
axes  and  hatchets  and  other  things.  By  and 
by  the  Indians  began  to  figure  that  they  were 
more  apt  to  get  plenty  of  goods  up  the  Missouri 
from  the  Americans  than  overland  from  the 
British  traders.  Do  you  see  how  that  began 
to  work  out?  Oh,  our  boys  knew  what  they 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

were  about,  all  right.  And  the  result  was  that 
our  fur  trade  swept  up  that  river  like  an  army 
with  banners  as  soon  as  Lewis  and  Clark  got 
back  home.  In  a  few  years  we  had  a  hundred 
and  forty  fur  trading  posts  on  the  Missouri  and 
its  upper  tributaries,  and  from  these  our  bold 
traders  pushed  out  by  pack  train  into  every 
corner  of  the  Rocky  Mountains/' 

"Gee!"  said  Jesse,  in  his  frequent  and 
not  elegant  slang.  "Gee!  Those  were 
the  days  r 

"Right  you  are — those  were  the  days !  Those 
were  the  great  days  of  adventure  and  romance 
and  exploration.  It  was  through  the  fur  trade 
that  we  explored  the  Rocky  Mountains.  Can't 
you  see  our  men  of  the  fur  posts,  paddling, 
rowing,  sailing,  tracking — getting  up  the 
Missouri  ?  Great  days,  yes,  Jesse — great  days 
indeed." 

"I  wish  we  had  a  picture  of  that  old  stock- 
ade !"  sighed  John. 

"None  exists.  Not  a  splinter  of  it  remains; 
it  was  burned  down  in  1805,  and  the  ruins  later 
engulfed  by  the  river.  But  I  fancy  we  can 
see  it,  from  the  description.  So  there  our  party 
spent  that  first  winter,  and  long  and  cold 
enough  it  was. 

"They  had  to  hunt  or  starve,  but  soon  their 
132 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

buffalo  and  elk  and  deer  and  antelope  got  very 
thin,  mere  skin  and  bones.  It  was  bitter  cold, 
and  the  hunters  came  in  frozen  time  and  again 
— a  hard,  bare,  bitter  fight  it  was.  From  all 
accounts,  it  was  an  old-fashioned  winter,  for 
the  mercury — they  spelled  it  'merkery' — froze 
solid  in  a  few  minutes  one  day  when  they  set 
the  thermometer  out  of  doors !" 

"And  it  must  have  been  cool  inside  the 
houses,  too,"  ventured  John.  "But  of  course 
they  had  to  do  their  writing  and  fix  up  their 
things." 

"Quite  so — they  had  to  get  their  specimens 
ready  to  ship  down  the  river  in  the  spring. 
Then  they  had  to  make  six  canoes  for  use  the 
next  year,  and  as  they  found  the  timber  un- 
suitable near  the  river,  the  men  had  to  camp 
out  where  they  found  the  trees,  and  then  they 
carried  the  canoes  by  hand  over  to  the  river, 
a  mile  and  a  half. 

"They  sent  the  big  flatboat,  or  bateau,  down 
the  river,  and  thirteen  men  went  with  it.  The 
two  perogues  and  the  six  new  cottonwood  dug- 
outs they  took  on  west,  up  the  river,  when  they 
started,  on  March  7,  1805,  to  finish  their  jour- 
ney across  the  continent.  Of  these  men,  the 
party  who  went  through,  there  were  thirty- 
one  ;  and  there  was  one  woman." 

i33 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"I  know !"  said  Jesse.    "Sacagawea !" 

"Right!  Sacagawea.  Make  it  two  words. 
'Wea*  means  'woman.'  'Bird  Woman*  was  her 
name — Sacaga  Wea.  And  of  the  entire  party, 
that  Indian  girl — she  was  only  a  girl,  though 
lately  married  and  though  she  started  west  with 
a  very  young  baby — was  worth  more  than  any 
man.  If  it  had  not  been  for  her  they  never 
would  have  got  across. 

"You  see,  up  to  this  place,  the  Mandan  towns, 
they  had  some  idea  of  the  country,  and  so  also 
they  had  beyond  here  as  far  as  the  mouth  of 
the  Yellowstone — that's  two  hundred  and 
eighty-eight  miles  above  here.  But  beyond 
the  mouth  of  the  Ro'  Jaune — it  even  then  was 
called  Roche  Jaune,  or  Yellow  Stone,  by  the 
early  French  voyageurs — it  was  said  the  foot 
of  white  man  never  then  had  passed.  There 
was  no  map,  no  report  or  rumor  to  help  them. 
If  they  had  a  guide,  it  couldn't  be  a  white 
man. 

"Now  among  the  Mandans  they  found  a 
man  called  Chaboneau,  or  Charboneau,  a 
Frenchman,  married  to  two  Indian  women,  one 
of  whom  was  Sacagawea.  He  had  bought  her 
from  the  Minnetarees,  where  she  was  a  captive. 

"Just  think  how  the  natives  traveled  in  those 
days!  You  know  the  Sioux  hunted  on  the 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

upper  Platte,  as  far  as  the  Rockies.  Well,  this 
Minnetaree  war  party  had  been  west  of  the 
Rockies,  or  in  the  big  bend  of  the  Rockies,  at 
the  very  head  of  the  Missouri  River,  among 
the  Shoshonis.  They  took  Sacagawea  prisoner 
when  she  was  a  little  girl,  and  brought  her  east, 
all  the  way  over  to  Dakota,  here.  But  she  was 
Indian — she  did  not  forget  what  she  saw.  She 
knew  about  the  Yellowstone,  and  the  Three 
Forks  of  the  Missouri. 

"Well  now,  whether  it  was  because  Cha- 
boneau,  the  new  interpreter,  wanted  her  along, 
or  whether  Lewis  and  Clark  figured  she  might 
be  useful,  Sacagawea  went  along,  all  the  way 
to  the  Pacific — and  all  the  way  back  to  the 
Mandans  again.  Be  sure,  her  husband 
did  not  beat  her  any  more,  while  they  were 
with  the  white  captains.  In  fact,  I  rather 
think  they  made  a  pet  of  her.  They  found 
they  could  rely  on  her  memory  and  her 
judgment. 

"So  the  real  guide  they  had  in  the  nameless 
and  unknown  country  was  a  Shoshoni  Indian 
girl.  It  looked  almost  like  something  provi- 
dential, the  way  they  found  her  here,  ready 
and  waiting  for  them — the  only  possible  guide 
in  all  that  country.  And  to-day,  such  was  the 
chivalry  and  justice  of  those  two  captains  of 

i35 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

our  Army — and  such  the  chivalry  and  justice 
of  the  men  of  Oregon  and  the  enthusiasm 
of  the  women  of  Oregon — you  may  see  in 
Portland,  near  the  sea  to  which  she 
helped  lead  our  flag,  the  bronze  statue  of 
Sacagawea,  the  Indian  girl.  That,  at  least, 
is  one  fine  thing  we  have  done  in  memory  of 
the  Indian. 

"And  within  the  last  two  or  three  years  a 
bronze  statue  of  Meriwether  Lewis  and  Wil- 
liam Clark  has  been  erected  at  Charlotteville, 
Virginia,  near  the  home  of  Meriwether  Lewis 
— that  was  at  Ivy  station,  to-day  only  a  scat- 
tered settlement.  And  away  down  in  Tennes- 
see, in  the  forest  of  Lewis  County,  named  after 
him,  I  have  stood  by  the  monument  that  state 
erected  over  the  little-known  and  tragic  grave 
of  Captain  Meriwether  Lewis — far  enough 
from  the  grave  of  the  poor  Indian  girl  who 
worshiped  him  more  than  she  could  her  worth- 
less husband. 

"No  one  knows  where  Sacagawea  was 
buried,  though  her  history  was  traced  a  little 
way  after  the  return  to  this  country.  She  was 
buried  perhaps  in  the  air,  on  a  scaffold,  and 
left  forgotten,  as  Indian  women  were,  and  we 
no  more  can  stand  by  her  grave  than  we  can 
be  sure  we  stand  on  the  exact  spot  where  Will 

136 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

Clark  built  his  winter  quarters  among  the 
Mandans. 

"Great  days,  boys — yes,  great  days,  and  good 
people  in  them,  too.  So  now  I  want  you  to 
study  a  little  here. 

"Look  back  down  the  river,  which  has 
seemed  so  long  for  you.  To-morrow  will  be 
the  Fourth  of  July.  It  was  Christmas  that 
Lewis  and  Clark  celebrated  with  their  men  in 
their  stockade." 

Their  new  friend  had  for  the  most  part  been 
silent  as  he  listened  to  this  counselor  of  the 
party.  He  now  spoke. 

"Then  I  take  it  that  you  are  going  on  up  the 
river  soon,  sir?"  said  he.  "I  wish  you  good 
journey  through  the  cow  country.  You'll  find 
the  river  narrower,  with  fewer  islands,  so  I 
hear;  and  I  should  think  it  became  swifter, 
but — I  don't  know." 

"I  was  going  to  come  to  that,"  said  Uncle 
Dick,  turning  to  Rob,  John,  and  Jesse.  "What 
do  you  think?  I'd  like  you  to  get  an  idea  of 
the  river  and  all  it  meant,  but  we  have  only 
the  summer  and  early  fall  to  use.  I  don't 
doubt  we  could  plug  on  up  with  the  motors, 
and  get  a  long  way  above  Great  Falls,  but 
about  the  time  we  got  to  where  we  could  have 
some  fun  fishing  or  maybe  shooting,  we'd  have 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

to  start  east  by  rail.  So  I'd  planned  that  we 
might  make  a  big  jump  here." 

"How  do  you  mean,  sir?"  Rob  asked. 

"Change  our  transportation." 

"Oh — because  Lewis  and  Clark  changed 
here?" 

"Natural  place  for  us  to  change,  if  we  do  at 
all,"  said  Uncle  Dick.  "We  ought  to  stick  as 
close  to  the  river  as  we  can,  and  as  a  matter 
of  fact  we  have  covered  the  most  monotonous 
part  of  it.  But  we  had  to  do  that,  for  there 
was  no  other  way  to  get  here  and  still  hang 
anywhere  near  to  the  river.  And  until  we  got 
here  we  struck  no  westbound  railroad  that 
would  advance  us  on  our  journey. 

"Here  we  could  get  up  the  Yellowstone  by 
rail,  but  we  are  working  on  the  Missouri.  If 
we  run  on  by  motor  car  up  to  Buford,  there 
we  can  get  by  rail  over  to  the  Great  Falls,  and 
still  hang  closer  to  the  river;  although,  of 
course,  we'll  not  be  following  it." 

"But  what'll  we  do  with  our  boat?"  began 
Jesse,  ruefully.  "Hate  to  leave  the  little  old 
Adventurer" 

"Well,  now,"  answered  his  uncle.  "We 
couldn't  so  well  take  her  along,  could  we?" 

"I'd  like  mighty  well  to  buy  her,"  interrupted 
the  editor.  "That  is,  if  you  care  to  sell  her." 

138 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"I  never  knew  my  boys  to  sell  any  of  their 
sporting  equipment/'  said  the  other.  "But  I 
expect  they'd  give  it  to  you,  right  enough. 
Eh,  boys  ?" 

They  looked  from  one  to  another.  "If  the 
gentleman  wanted  her,"  began  Rob,  at  last, 
"and  if  we've  done  with  her,  I  don't  see  why 
we  couldn't.  But  I  think  we  ought  to  take  the 
motors  along  as  far  as  we  can,  because  we 
might  need  them." 

"Good  idea,"  Uncle  Dick  nodded.  "We  can 
get  a  trailer  here,  can't  we?"  he  asked  of  their 
friend. 

"Sure;  and  a  good  car;  too.  I'll  drive  you 
up  to  Buford,  myself,  for  the  fun  of  it — and  the 
value  of  it  to  me.  I'll  get  a  car  at  Bismarck. 
We  can  pack  your  outfit  in  the  trailer  and  the 
motors,  too,  easily.  You  can  check  and  express 
stuff  through  to  Great  Falls  from  Buford — 
and  there  you  are.  How'll  you  go  from  there 
—boat?"  ' 

"I  don't  believe  so,"  replied  Uncle  Dick.  "I 
believe  we'd  have  more  freedom  if  we  took  a 
pack  train  above  Great  Falls,  and  cut  across 
lots  now  and  then,  checking  up  in  our  Journal 
all  the  way." 

"That's  the  stuff!"  exclaimed  John. 
"Horses!" 

10  139 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"Lewis  and  Clark  used  horses  for  some 
distance,  at  the  crossing,"  said  Uncle  Dick, 
"so  I  think  we  may  dare  do  so.  We  want 
all  the  variety  we  can  get,  and  all  the  fun 
we  can  get,  too.  What  do  you  say,  young 
gentlemen  ?" 

"It  sounds  good  to  me,"  said  Rob.  "I'd  like 
to  see  the  mountains  pretty  well.  You  see,  a 
great  part  of  our  lives  has  been  spent  in  Alaska 
and  the  northern  country,  and  we're  just  get- 
ting acquainted  with  our  own  country,  you 
might  say.  The  Rockies  this  far  south  must 
be  fine  in  the  early  fall." 

"It  suits  me,"  assented  John.  "I'd  like  to 
take  the  Adventurer  along,  but  Lewis  and 
Clark  didn't  take  their  boats  through  all  the 
way,  either." 

"And  if  we  had  time,"  added  Jesse,  "we 
could  run  some  river  late  in  the  fall,  say  from 
Great  Falls  down  to  here." 

"All  good,"  nodded  Uncle  Dick.  Then  turn- 
ing to  their  new  friend,  "Suppose  we  cross 
our  camp  to  Bismarck  the  morning  of  July  5th, 
tie  up  our  boat  there  for  you,  and  then  go  on  in 
the  way  you  suggest — motor  and  trailer  ?" 

"Agreed,"  said  the  other.  "I'll  be  there  early 
that  day." 

"Which  way  shall  we  go?"  asked  Rob.  "If 
140 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

we  took  the  road  along  the  Northern  Pacific 
west,  we  could  see  the  Bad  Lands,  and  go 
through  Medora,  Theodore  Roosevelt's  old 
town." 

The  editor  shook  his  head.  "Bad,  if  there's 
rain,"  he  said.  "Besides,  that  takes  you  below 
the  Missouri.  I  think  we'd  best  go  on  the  east 
side  the  river,  north  of  Bismarck.  We  could 
swing  out  toward  the  Turtle  Lakes,  and  then 
make  more  west,  toward  the  Fort  Berthold 
Reservation.  From  there  we  could  maybe  get 
through  till  we  struck  the  Great  Northern 
Railroad;  and  then  we  could  get  west  to  Bu- 
ford,  on  the  line,  and  on  the  river  again.  If 
we  got  lost  we  could  find  ourselves  again  some 
time." 

"How  long  would  it  take  ?"  inquired  Rob. 

"If  it's  two  hundred  and  eighty-eight  miles 
by  the  river,  it  would  be  maybe  two  hundred 
and  fifty  by  trail.  We  could  do  it  in  a  day,  on 
a  straightaway  good  road  like  one  of  the  motor 
highways,  but  we'll  have  nothing  of  the  sort. 
I'll  say  two  days,  three,  maybe  four — we'd 
know  better  when  we  got  there." 

"That  sounds  more  adventurish,"  said  Jesse. 
And  what  the  youngest  of  them  thought  ap- 
pealed to  the  others  also. 

"Very  well.  All  set  for  the  morning  after 
141 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

the  Fourth,"  said  Uncle  Dick.  "And  when  we 
go  back  to  Mandan  be  sure  not  to  eat  too  much 
ice  cream,  for  we're  not  apt  to  run  across  very 
many  doctors  on  the  way.  And  now  we'd 
better  get  ready  to  camp  here  to-night.  We 
can  make  Mandan  by  noon  to-morrow — it's 
faster,  downstream/"' 

"On  the  way,"  said  their  friend,  "I  want 
you  to  go  around  to  the  coulee  below  town, 
where  there's  three  or  four  tepees  of  Sioux  in 
camp.  What  do  they  do?  Oh,  make  little 
things  to  sell  in  town — and  not  above  beg- 
ging a  little.  There's  one  squaw  we  call 
Mary,  who  has  been  coming  here  a  good  many 
years.  She  makes  about  the  finest  moccasins 
we  ever  get.  She  made  my  wife  a  pair,  out 
of  buckskin  white  as  snow.  I  don't  know 
where  she  got  it." 

"The  Sioux  had  parfleche  soles  to  all  their 
moccasins,"  said  John,  wisely.  "All  the  buffalo 
and  Plains  Indians  did.  The  forest  Indians 
had  soft  soles." 

"You're  right,  son,"  said  the  editor.  "For 
modern  bedroom  moccasins,  to  sell  to  white 
women,  Mary  makes  them  all  soft,  with  a  shal- 
low ankle  flap.  Most  of  the  Indian  men  wear 
shoes  now,  but  when  she  makes  a  pair  of  men's 
moccasins  she  always  puts  on  the  rawhide  soles. 

142 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

You  can  see  the  hair  on  the  bottoms,  some- 
times." 

"Buffalo  hair?"  smiled  Jesse. 

"Well,  no.  The  Indians  use  beef  hide  now. 
But  they  don't  like  it." 

"Neither  do  I,"  said  Jesse. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

OLD  DAYS  ON  THE  RIVER 

OT  so  bad,  not  so  bad  at  all/'  was  John's 
comment  as  they  all  sat  around  the  camp 
fire  on  the  evening  of  July  5th.  They  had  spent 
two  pleasant  days  in  town  and  now  were  forty 
miles  out  into  the  Plains  country  above  the  rail- 
road; they  had  pitched  camp  at  the  edge  of  a 
willow-lined  stream  which  ran  between  steep 
bluffs  whose  tops  rose  level  with  the  plain. 
The  smoke  of  their  camp  fire  drifted  down  the 
troughlike  valley  from  their  encampment.  The 
boys  had  found  enough  clean  wood  for  a  broil- 
ing fire,  and  John  just  now  had  taken  off  the 
thick  beefsteak  which  they  had  brought  along 
with  them. 

"You  will  observe  that  this  is  from  the  ten- 
derloin of  the  three-year-old  fat  buffalo  cow 
that  I  killed  this  morning,"  said  he.  "I  always 
did  like  buffalo.  We  will  break  open  some  mar- 
row bones  about  midnight,  and  I'll  grill  some 
boss  ribs  for  breakfast." 

"And  for  luncheon,"  added  Jesse,  joining 
readily  in  the  make-believe,  "we'll  try  some  of 

144 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

the  cold  roast  of  the  last  bighorn  I  killed, 
over  in  the  breaks  of  the  Missouri.  Not  so 
bad!" 

Their  friend  from  Mandan  looked  at  them, 
smiling.  "I  hope  you  haven't  shot  any  tame 
sheep,"  said  he.  "No,  not  a  bad  camp,  except 
that  the  mosquitoes  are  eating  me  alive.  How 
do  these  boys  stand  it  the  way  they  do  ?" 

"Oh,  they're  tough,"  laughed  Uncle  Dick. 
"We've  had  so  many  trips  up  North  together, 
where  the  mosquitoes  really  are  bad,  we've  got 
immune,  so  we  don't  mind  a  little  thing  like 
this.  It  takes  two  or  three  years  to  get  over 
fighting  them.  For  the  first  year  they  almost 
drive  a  man  crazy,  up  there  in  Alaska." 

"I  expect,  sir,  you'd  better  go  inside  the  tent 
with  our  uncle  to-night,"  said  Rob.  "We  have 
our  buffalo  robes  and  bed  rolls  and  don't  need 
any  tent,  but  if  you  drop  the  bar  to  the  tent 
door,  and  take  a  wet  sock  to  the  mosquitoes 
that  get  in,  I  think  you'll  not  be  bothered." 

"But  how  will  you  sleep,  outside?" 

"Oh,  we  pull  a  corner  of  the  blanket  over 
our  faces  if  they  get  too  bad.  By  nine  or  ten 
o'clock  they'll  be  gone — until  sunup;  then 
they're  the  worst.  If  we  had  camped  up  on 
the  rim  it  would  have  been  better." 

"I'm  going  up  on  the  rim  after  supper," 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

said  Jesse,  "to  see  if  I  can't  find  an  antelope — 
I  suppose  you'd  call  it  a  jack  rabbit.  I  saw  three 
coveys  of  prairie  chickens  cross  the  road  to- 
day. If  it  was  legal,  now !" 

Indeed,  an  hour  later  the  youngest  of  the 
party  came  in  at  dark,  carrying  a  pair  of  long- 
legged  jacks,  one  of  them  young  and  fat.  "I 
always  was  good  on  antelopes,"  said  he. 
"These  were  in  at  the  edge  of  a  farmer's  clover 
field.  I'm  glad  we're  getting  into  good  game 
country !" 

"Yes,"  Uncle  Dick  said,  "between  the  Man- 
dans  and  the  mouth  of  the  Yellowstone,  Lewis 
and  Clark  began  to  find  the  bighorn,  which 
was  new  to  them.  And  as  we've  said,  they 
now  were  meeting  the  first  'white  bears'  or 
grizzlies.  All  along,  from  here  to  Great  Falls, 
was  the  best  grizzly  country  they  found  in  all 
the  way  across." 

"If  only  they  were  in  there  now !"  said  John. 

"Why,  would  you  dare  tackle  a  grizzly?" 
smiled  their  friend.  John  did  not  say  much. 

"These  boys  have  done  it,"  replied  their 
uncle  for  them.  "I'd  hate  to  be  the  bear.  They 
shoot  straight,  and  the  rifles  they  have  are  far 
more  powerful  than  the  ones  the  first  explor- 
ers had." 

"We'll  call  this  exploring,"  said  Jesse,  with 
146 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

sarcasm.  "I'll  have  to  get  help  to  hang  up  my 
antelopes  so  they'll  cool  out. 

"But,  anyhow,"  he  added,  "this  is  as  much 
fun  as  plugging  along  among  the  sand  bars  in 
the  motor  boat.  We  beat  the  oars,  and  now 
this  gas  wagon  beats  our  boat  motors !" 

"Uncle  Dick,"  suddenly  interrupted  Rob, 
"we've  been  talking  about  the  fur  trade  on 
the  river  a  hundred  years  ago.  I  understand 
the  fur  posts  were  supplied  by  steamboats,  at 
the  height  of  the  fur  trade,  anyhow.  Now,  how 
long  did  it  take  a  steamer  in  those  days  to  make 
the  run,  say,  from  St.  Louis  to  the  mouth  of 
the  Yellowstone?" 

"That's  easy  to  answer,"  his  uncle  replied. 
"The  records  and  logs  of  some  of  the  old  boats 
still  exist  in  St.  Louis,  and  while  I  was  there  I 
looked  up  some  of  them. 

"Now  as  nearly  as  I  can  learn  there  was  no 
exact  way  of  estimating  distances  by  any  of 
those  travelers — the  speedometer  was  not  in- 
vented, nor  the  odometer,  nor  the  ship's  log. 
Now  I  don't  know  how  the  steamboat  captains 
got  at  it,  but  they  kept  a  daily  log  of  distance, 
and  they  had  the  different  stopping  places  all 
logged  for  distance.  We  make  it  a  little  less 
than  sixteen  hundred  miles  to  Mandan.  The 
Journal  makes  it  sixteen  hundred  and  ten — 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

close  enough.  The  river  chart  calls  it  fourteen 
hundred  and  fifty-two  to  the  bridge ;  over  fifty 
miles  below  the  Mandan  villages. 

"But  the  Journal  makes  it  eighteen  hundred 
and  eighty-eight  miles  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Yellowstone.  My  steamboat  records  call  it 
seventeen  hundred  and  sixty  miles — more  than 
a  hundred  miles  shorter.  At  least,  that  was 
what  the  traders  called  it  to  Fort  Union,  which 
was  just  above  the  mouth  of  the  Yellowstone, 
as  nearly  as  now  is  known;  you  must  bear  in 
mind  that  practically  every  one  of  the  old  fur 
posts  was  long  ago  wiped  out.  How?  Well, 
largely  by  the  steamboats  themselves!  The 
captains  were  always  short  of  wood.  They  tore 
down  and  burned  up  first  one  and  then  another 
of  the  early  posts.  Settlers  did  the  rest. 

"At  first,  as  early  as  1841,  it  took  eighty  days 
to  do  that  seventeen  hundred  and  sixty  miles 
upstream,  and  twenty-one  days  to  run  back 
downstream.  In  1845  they  did  it  in  forty-two 
days  up,  and  fifteen  down.  In  1847  it  was  done 
in  forty  days  up,  and  fourteen  days  down ;  and 
they  didn't  beat  that  much,  if  any." 

"That's  an  average  of  about  forty-four  miles 
a  day,"  said  Rob,  who  was  doing  some  figur- 
ing on  his  notebook.  "Going  down,  about  one 
hundred  and  twenty-three  miles." 

148 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"Why,  they  beat  our  average!"  complained 
John.  "We  didn't  climb  her  in  much  over 
forty,  if  that." 

"Well,  we  could  pick  the  way  easier,  but  she 
had  more  power,"  said  Rob.  "Everybody 
knows  a  big  boat  beats  a  little  one.  But  she 
didn't  beat  us  much,  at  that." 

"The  Adventurer's  a  good  boat,"  nodded 
Uncle  Dick,  "and  I  think  on  the  whole 
we've  got  a  pretty  good  idea  of  the  travel 
of  1804  and  1805,  or  will  have  before  we're 
done. 

"But  now,  one  thing  or  two  I  want  you  also 
to  bear  in  mind.  Life  isn't  all  adventure.  Com- 
merce follows  on  the  trail  of  adventure.  The 
fur  traders  forgot  the  romance,  and  hurried 
in  up  the  Missouri,  as  soon  as  they  could.  And 
what  fur  they  did  get!  No  wonder  Great 
Britain  was  sorry  to  meet  Lewis  and  Clark  up 
here! 

"There  were  a  lot  of  important  fur  posts 
that  fed  into  the  Missouri.  The  mouth  of  the 
James  River  was  a  good  post.  Fort  Pierre — 
on  the  Teton,  down  below — was  the  best  post 
on  the  river  except  Union,  at  the  Yellowstone. 
Pierre  covered  two  and  a  half  acres  of  ground, 
but  Union  was  better  built — she  had  twenty- 
foot  palisades  a  foot  square,  and  she  stood  two 

149 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

hundred  and  forty  by  two  hundred  and  twenty 
feet,  with  stone  bastions  at  two  corners,  pierced 
for  cannon,  and  a  riflemen's  banquette  clear 
around  inside. 

"They  were  right  in  the  middle  of  the  Sioux 
and  near  the  Blackfeet,  and  after  the  smallpox 
came  on  the  river,  the  Indians  got  bitter  and 
hated  the  thought  of  a  white  man.  But  they 
had  only  fur  to  trade  for  rifles  and  traps  and 
blankets,  and  the  white  traders  made  the  only 
market. 

"I  was  speaking  of  Fort  Pierre,  because  of 
a  journal  kept  in  1832  by  the  trader  at  that 
place.  It  is  largely  a  record  of  weather  and 
water,  but  has  a  touch  or  so  of  interest  now 
and  then — I  made  some  notes  from  it.  Thus, 
I  find  that  on  June  24th  the  steamer  Yelloiv- 
stone  arrived,  down  bound,  and  they  put  six 
hundred  packs  of  buffalo  robes  on  her.  That 
boat  on  the  next  day  had  on  board  one  thou- 
sand three  hundred  packs  of  robes  and  beaver. 
In  the  old  trade  a  pack  was  ninety  to  one  hun- 
dred pounds. 

"On  July  9th  three  bateaux  got  in  from 
Fort  Union  with  a  lot  of  robes.  They  loaded 
on  one  bateau  one  hundred  and  twenty  packs 
of  beaver  and  other  fur,  and  on  another  thirty 
packs  of  robes,  and  she  was  to  take  on  one  hun- 

150 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

dred  and  twenty  to  one  hundred  and  thirty 
packs  more  at  Yankton  post. 

"On  July  llth  four  bateaux  left  Fort  Pierre 
for  St.  Louis,  and  they  carried  three  hundred 
and  fifty-five  packs  of  robes  and  ten  thousand 
two  hundred  and  thirty  pounds  of  beaver.  And 
on  July  30th  another  bateau  came  down  from 
Union  with  six  thousand  beaver  skins  on  board. 

"From  this  you  can  see  something  of  the 
size  of  the  big  bateaux — or  Mackinaws — of 
that  time,  and  something  of  the  size  of  the  fur 
trade  as  well.  And  all  the  time  the  big  river 
was  outfitting  the  hardy  pack-train  men  who 
brought  out  fortunes  in  beaver  from  the  rivers 
of  the  Rockies.  Great  times,  boys — great 
times!  And  all  of  that  trade  rested  on  the 
Lewis  and  Clark  expedition. 

"You  now  have  seen  how  important  the 
mouth  of  the  Yellowstone  was — where  Fort 
Union  was  located  in  1828.  That  was  for  a 
time  pretty  near  the  end  of  the  road,  just  as 
it  was  for  Lewis  and  Clark  a  quarter  century 
earlier.  Above  there  were  the  Blackfeet,  and 
they  were  bad  Indians.  About  the  first  man 
up  in  there  was  James  Kipp. 

"Now  I  want  to  tell  you  something  very 
curious — one  of  those  things  now  rapidly  get- 
ting out  of  record  and  remembrance.  James 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

Kipp  lived  among  the  Mandans  and  married 
there.  He  had  a  son,  Joe  Kipp,  whom  he  once 
took  home  to  Illinois  to  educate,  after  he  had 
left  the  trade  and  married  a  white  woman. 
He  loved  Joe,  but  told  him  he  must  never  let 
it  be  known  that  he  was  the  Indian  son  of 
James  Kipp,  the  respected  white  man. 

"Well,  the  boy  Joe  couldn't  stand  that.  He 
ran  away  up  the  river,  and  never  came  back. 
He  went  back  to  his  mother,  a  Mandan  woman. 
In  later  days,  since  the  fur  trade  passed  and 
the  Indians  all  were  put  on  reservations,  Joe 
Kipp  was  the  post  trader  for  years.  He  was 
a  bold  trader  and  went  into  Canada  at  one 
time.  He  founded  old  Fort  Whoop-up.  He 
got  to  be  worth  some  money  in  his  stores, 
though  always  liberal  with  the  Indians.  He 
was  the  man  who  showed  the  engineers  of  the 
Great  Northern  Railroad  the  pass  which  they 
built  through.  It  is  the  lowest  railroad  pass 
of  them  all,  though  the  one  farthest  north  of 
all  our  railroads  over  the  Rockies. 

"Now,  I  knew  Joe  Kipp  very  well  and  often 
met  him  on  the  Blackfeet  Reservation.  He 
lived  in  a  big  frame  house  there,  had  a  bath- 
tub and  a  Chinaman  cook,  and  showed  his 
Indians  how  to  'follow  the  path  of  the  white 
man/ 

152 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"But  what  I  want  you  to  remember  is  this : 
Joe  Kipp  had  his  Mandan  mother  with  him 
until  she  died.  I  have  seen  her,  too,  a  very 
tall,  old  woman,  and  wild  as  a  hawk.  Joe 
built  her  a  little  cabin  all  her  own,  where  no 
one  else  ever  went.  In  her  little  cabin  she  spent 
her  last  years  as  she  had  lived  in  her  earlier 
days  among  the  Mandans,  making  moccasins 
for  Joe,  decorating  tobacco  pouches  and  fire 
bags  with  beads  and  porcupine  quills.  I  have 
a  fire  bag  of  hers  that  Joe  gave  me,  and  I  prize 
it  very  much.  She  no  longer  had  the  buffalo, 
but  on  the  rafters  of  her  lodge  she  had  her 
dried  meat  hanging,  and  the  interior  was  some- 
thing no  man  living  will  see  again. 

"Joe  Kipp's  Mandan  mother  was  the  last 
living  soul  of  the  pure-blood  Mandan  tribe,  one 
of  the  most  curious  and  puzzling  ones  of  the 
West — they  were  a  light-colored  people,  the 
children  with  light  eyes;  no  one  knows  how 
they  came  on  the  Missouri.  But  the  smallpox 
got  them  almost  all.  They  went  crazy,  jumped 
in  the  river — died — passed. 

"Well,  Joe's  mother,  so  he  said,  was  the  last, 
a  very  old  woman,  I  presume  nearly  a  hundred 
then.  Often  she  would  take  her  blanket  and 
go  out  on  a  hilltop  and  sit  there  motionless 
hours  at  a  time,  with  her  blanket  over  her  face 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

— thinking,  thinking,  I  presume,  over  the  days 
that  you  and  I  are  studying  together  now. 

"And  just  a  little  while  ago  I  heard  of  Joe 
Kipp's  death,  too.  His  mother  died  some  years 
earlier.  So  that  is  some  Mandan  history  which 
I  presume  even  our  Mandan  friend  here  never 
has  heard  before — about  the  last  of  the  Man- 
dans,  who  came  down,  broken  and  helpless, 
even  into  our  own  time." 

"Don't !"  suddenly  said  Rob.  "Please  don't ! 
It  makes  me  sad." 

They  fell  silent  as  presently  each  found  his 
way  to  his  blankets. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

AT  THE  YELLOWSTONE 

THE  motor-car  journey  of  the  party  had  not 
much  of  eventfulness,  being  practically, 
most  of  the  way,  through  a  farm  or  range 
country  where  roads  of  least  passable  sort  led 
them  in  the  general  northwesterly  direction 
which  they  desired  to  take.  All  three  of  the 
young  explorers  could  drive,  so  they  took  turns 
occasionally,  while  the  editor  sat  in  the  back 
seat  and  conversed  with  Uncle  Dick. 

Beyond  a  few  grouse  and  rabbits,  with  a 
half  dozen  coyotes,  they  saw  no  game  except 
wild  fowl  on  the  sloughs.  The  cabins  and 
tepees  on  the  Fort  Berthold  Indian  Reservation 
afforded  them  a  change  of  scene,  and  they  were 
delighted  to  find  three  of  the  native  Mandan 
earth  lodges,  one  nearly  fifty  feet  in  diameter. 
They  learned  that  the  remnants  of  the  Man- 
dan  tribe,  few  in  number  and  comprising  few, 
if  any,  pure  blood,  were  located  with  reserva- 
tion here,  and  were  clinging  to  their  tribal 
customs  the  best  they  could. 

"Well,  here's  what  Patrick  Gass  says  about 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

the  old  Mandan  huts  and  how  they  were  built 
— and  he  was  a  carpenter  and  so  ought  to 
know."  John  was  always  ready  with  his 
quotations : 

"A  Mandane's  circular  hut  is  spacious.  I  measured 
the  one  I  lodged  in,  and  found  it  90  feet  from  the  door 
to  the  opposite  side.  The  whole  space  is  first  dug  out 
about  l|  feet  below  the  surface  of  the  earth.  In  the 
center  is  the  square  fireplace,  about  five  feet  on  each 
side,  dug  out  about  two  feet  below  the  surface  of  the 
ground  flat.  The  lower  part  of  the  hut  is  constructed 
by  erecting  strong  posts  about  six  feet  out  of  the  ground, 
at  equal  distances  from  each  other,  according  to  the 
proposed  size  of  the  hut,  as  they  are  not  all  of  the  same 
dimensions.  Upon  these  are  laid  logs  as  large  as  the 
posts,  reaching  from  post  to  post  to  form  the  circle. 
On  the  outer  side  are  placed  pieces  of  split  wood  seven 
feet  long,  in  a  slanting  direction,  one  end  resting  on  the 
ground,  the  other  leaning  against  the  cross-logs  or 
beams.  Upon  these  beams  rest  rafters  about  the  thick- 
ness of  a  man's  leg,  and  12  to  15  feet  long,  slanting 
enough  to  drain  off  the  rain,  and  laid  so  close  to  each 
other  as  to  touch.  The  upper  ends  of  the  rafters  are 
supported  upon  stout  pieces  of  squared  timber,  which 
last  are  supported  by  four  thick  posts  about  five  feet 
in  circumference,  15  feet  out  of  the  ground  and  15  feet 
asunder,  forming  a  square.  Over  these  squared  tim- 
bers others  of  equal  size  are  laid,  crossing  them  at  right 
angles,  leaving  an  opening  about  four  feet  square.  This 
serves  for  chimney  and  windows,  as  there  are  no  other 
openings  to  admit  light,  and  when  it  rains  even  this 
hole  is  covered  over  with  a  canoe  (bull  boat)  to  pre- 
vent the  rain  from  injuring  their  gammine  (sic)  and 
earthen  pots.  The  whole  roof  is  well  thatched  with  the 

156 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

small  willows  in  which  the  Missourie  abounds,  laid 
on  to  the  thickness  of  six  inches  or  more,  fastened  to- 
gether in  a  very  compact  manner  and  well  secured  to 
the  rafters.  Over  the  whole  is  spread  about  one  foot  of 
earth,  and  around  the  wall,  to  the  height  of  three  or 
four  feet,  is  commonly  laid  up  earth  to  the  thickness  of 
three  feet,  for  security  in  case  of  an  attack  and  to  keep 
out  the  cold.  The  door  is  five  feet  broad  and  six  high, 
with  a  covered  way  or  porch  on  the  outside  of  the  same 
height  as  the  door,  seven  feet  broad  and  ten  in  length. 
The  doors  are  made  of  raw  buffalo  hide  stretched  upon 
a  frame  and  suspended  by  cords  from  one  of  the  beams 
which  form  the  circle.  Every  night  the  door  is  bar- 
ricaded with  a  long  piece  of  timber  supported  by  two 
stout  posts  set  in  the  ground  in  the  inside  of  the  hut, 
one  on  each  side  of  the  door." 

"Well/'  remarked  Jesse,  "that  sort  of  a 
house  was  big  enough,  so  it  is  no  wonder  they 
could  keep  their  horses  in  there  with  them, 
too,  in  the  wintertime.  And  they  fed  them 
cottonwood  limbs  when  there  wasn't  any  grass 
to  eat." 

"Yes,"  remarked  Uncle  Dick,  "that's  what 
we  call  adjusting  to  an  environment.  I  will 
say  these  Mandans  were  rather  efficient  on  the 
whole,  and  not  bad  engineers  and  architects." 

They  did  not  tarry  long,  although  they  made 
their  second  encampment  within  the  lines  of 
the  old  Fort  Berthold  Reservation,  for  they 
found  all  the  Indians  wearing  white  men's 
clothing,  and  using  wagons  and  farm  imple- 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

ments,  and  Jesse  said  they  had  more  Indianish 
Indians  in  Alaska. 

Now  they  bore  rather  sharply  to  the  north, 
feeling  for  the  line  of  the  railway,  which  they 
struck  at  a  village  about  midway  between  the 
Little  Knife  and  the  White  Earth  Rivers.  The 
early  afternoon  of  their  fourth  day  brought 
them  back  once  more  to  the  sight  of  the  Mis- 
souri, at  the  town  of  Buford,  near  the  Mon- 
tana line  and  opposite  the  mouth  of  the  Yellow- 
stone. 

Following  their  usual  custom,  they  made 
camp  outside  the  vicinity  of  the  town,  after 
purchasing  the  supplies  they  needed  for  the  day 
and  for  the  return  trip  of  their  obliging  friend 
from  Mandan,  who  now  reluctantly  decided 
that  he  could  accompany  them  no  farther. 

"I'd  rather  go  on  with  you  than  do  anything 
I  know,"  said  he,  "but  it's  going  to  be  quite  a 
trip,  and  I  won't  have  time,  even  if  we  could 
get  through  with  a  car." 

Uncle  Dick  nodded.  "Really  the  best  way 
to  do  this  would  be  to  take  ship  again  here  and 
follow  the  river  up  the  Great  Falls,"  he  said ; 
"but  by  the  time  we  got  a  boat  rigged  and  had 
made  the  run  up — best  part  of  six  hundred 
miles — we'd  be  almost  a  month  further  into  the 
summer — because  the  river  is  swifter  above 

158 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

here.  They  made  good  time,  but  it  was  mostly 
cordelle  work.  And,  using  gas  motors,  the  boys 
wouldn't  have  much  chance  of  any  real  sport 
and  exercise,  which,  of  course,  I  want  them  to 
have  every  summer  when  possible. 

"Get  your  map,  John — the  big  government 
map — and  let's  have  a  look  at  this  country  in 
west  of  here." 

John  complied.  They  all  bent  over  the  map, 
which  they  spread  down  on  the  floor  of  the 
tent.  Their  gasoline  camp  lantern  shed  its 
brilliant  light  over  them  all  as  they  bent  down 
in  study  of  the  map. 

"You'll  see  now  that  we're  almost  at  the  far- 
thest north  point  on  the  Missouri  River.  From 
here  it  runs  almost  west  to  the  Great  Falls,  and 
then  almost  south.  Now  our  new  railroad  (the 
Great  Northern  Railroad)  will  take  us  to  the 
Great  Falls  of  the  Missouri,  but  it  by  no  means 
follows  the  Missouri.  On  the  contrary,  a  little 
over  two  hundred  miles  from  here,  I'd  guess, 
it  strikes  the  Milk  River — as  Lewis  and  Clark 
called  it — and  follows  that  river  half  across 
the  state  of  Montana.  It  would  carry  us  out 
to  the  Blackfeet  Reservation,  and  what  is  now 
Glacier  Park — my  own  hunting  ground  among 
the  Blackfeet,  where  I  knew  Joe  Kipp — but 
that  is  entirely  off  the  map  for  us." 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"Why,  sure  it  is !"  said  Jesse,  following  the 
line  of  the  river  with  his  finger.  "Look  it! 
It  runs  away  south,  hundreds  of  miles,  into  the 
southwest  corner  of  the  state ;  and  the  railroad 
goes  almost  to  Canada.  And  there's  a  lot  of 
river  between  here  and  Great  Falls,  too — bad 
water,  you  say?" 

"And  see  here  where  the  Yellowstone  goes!" 
added  Rob.  "It's  away  below  the  Missouri,  a 
hundred,  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  in  places — 
no  railroads  and  no  towns." 

"No,"  remarked  their  leader,  "but  one  of  the 
real  wild  places  of  the  West  in  its  day — as 
cow  range  or  hunting  range,  that  wild  and 
broken  country  in  there  had  no  superior,  and 
not  many  men  know  all  of  it  even  now.  Part 
of  it  is  wonderfully  beautiful. 

"At  no  part  of  the  journey  did  Lewis  and 
Clark  have  more  exciting  adventures  than  in 
precisely  this  country  that  weVe  got  to  skip, 
too.  The  buffalo  fairly  swarmed,  and  elk  and 
antelope  and  bighorn  sheep  and  black-tail  deer 
were  all  around  them  all  the  time.  It  was  a 
wonderful  new  world  for  them.  How  many 
of  the  great  fighting  grizzlies  they  met  in  that 
strip  of  the  river,  I  wouldn't  like  to  say,  but  in 
almost  every  instance  it  meant  a  fight,  until 
half  the  crew  would  no  longer  go  after  a 

160 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

grizzly,  they  were  so  scared  of  them.  One  they 
shot  through  eight  times,  and  it  chased  the 
whole  party  even  then.  I  tell  you,  those  bears 
were  bad ! 

"But  we'd  not  see  one  now — they  're  all  gone, 
every  one.  Nor  would  we  see  a  bighorn — be- 
sides, they  are  protected  by  a  continuous  closed 
season  in  Montana.  Pretty  country,  yes,  wild 
and  bold  and  risky;  but  better  coming  down 
than  going  up.  We  miss  some  grand  scenery, 
but  save  a  month's  time,  maybe. 

"But  now  see  here — about  halfway  out  to 
the  Blackfeet  is  Havre  Junction.  There  we 
can  take  a  train  southwest  to  the  town  of  Great 
Falls ;  and  above  there  we  can  stop  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Marias  River.  Between  there  and  the 
Falls  is  Fort  Benton,  and  that  is  one  of  the 
most  important  points,  in  a  historical  way, 
there  was  on  the  whole  river,  although  its  glory 
departed  long  ago.  From  there  we'd  get  to 
our  pack  train  and  be  off  for  the  head  of  the 
Missouri.  What  do  you  think,  Rob?" 

Rob  was  silent  for  a  time.  "Well,"  said  he, 
at  length,  "I  think  we'd  get  pretty  much  a 
repetition  of  the  river  work,  and  not  much 
sport — hard  river,  too. 

"Now,  it  would  be  fine  to  go  to  old  Benton 
by  river,  to  the  head  of  navigation;  but  we 

161 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

know  that  Fort  Benton  was  not  one  of  the 
early  fur  posts — indeed,  it  came  in  when  the  last 
of  the  buffalo  were  being  killed.  It  was  where 
the  traveling  traders  got  their  goods,  and  where 
the  bull  outfits  got  their  freight  in  1863  for  the 
placer  mines  of  Montana  and  was  the  outfit 
place  for  Bozeman  and  all  those  early  points. 
But  that  was  after  the  fur  trade  was  over." 

"That's  right,"  said  Uncle  Dick.  "First  came 
the  explorers;  then  the  fur  traders;  then  the 
miners;  then  the  cow  men;  then  the  farmers. 
The  end  of  the  buffalo  came  in  1883 — a  million 
robes  that  year ;  and  the  next,  none  at  all — the 
most  terrible  wild-life  tragedy  that  ever  was 
known.  After  that  came  the  cattle  and  the 
sheep  and  the  irrigation  men." 

He  sat  musing  for  the  time. 

"But  listen  now  to  a  little  more  of  the  early 
stuff.  You,  Jesse,  do  you  follow  up  the  Yellow- 
stone with  your  finger  till  you  come  to  the 
mouth  of  the  Big  Horn  River.  Got  it  ?" 

"Yes,  sir,"  replied  Jesse.    "Here  she  is." 

"All  right.  Now,  at  that  place,  in  the  year 
1807 — the  next  year  after  Lewis  and  Clark 
got  back  home — a  shrewd  St.  Louis  trader  by 
name  of  Manuel  Lisa,  of  Spanish  descent  he 
was,  heard  all  those  beaver  stories,  and  he 
pushed  up  the  Missouri  and  up  the  Yellow- 

162 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

stone,  and  built  a  post  called  Fort  Manuel  there. 
He  wanted  to  trade  with  the  Blackfeet  and 
Crows  both,  but  found  those  tribes  were  ene- 
mies. He  couldn't  hold  the  fort.  He  dropped 
back  to  St.  Louis  and  formed  the  first  of  the 
great  fur  companies,  the  Missouri  River  Com- 
pany. They  were  the  pioneers  of  many  later 
companies. 

"The  Missouri  River  Company  had  their 
post  at  the  Three  Forks  of  the  Missouri — away 
up  yonder,  eight  hundred  miles  from  here — 
as  early  as  1810;  that  was  crowding  Lewis  and 
Clark  pretty  fairly  close,  eh  ?  Well,  then  came 
the  Rocky  Mountain  Company,  and  the  Ameri- 
can Fur  Company,  and  the  Pacific  Fur  Com- 
pany, and  the  Columbia  Fur  Company,  and  I 
don't  know  how  many  other  St.  Louis  partner- 
ships upriver — not  mentioning  the  pack-train 
outfits  under  many  names — and  so  all  at  once, 
as  though  by  magic,  there  were  posts  strung 
clear  to  the  head  of  the  river — one  hundred 
and  forty  of  them,  as  I  have  told  you.  And 
of  them  all  you  could  hardly  find  a  trace  of 
one  of  them  to-day. 

"There's  dispute  even  as  to  the  site  of  Fort 
Union,  which  was  just  above  here  and  up  the 
river  a  little  above  the  Yellowstone.  That  was 
built  in  1828. 

163 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"Long  before  that,  and  for  twenty  years 
after  that,  the  fur  traders  kept  on  building, 
until  the  mouth  of  every  good-sized  river  run- 
ning into  the  Missouri  had  not  only  one,  but 
sometimes  three  or  four  posts,  all  competing 
all  or  part  of  the  time !  Risky  business  it  was. 
Some  made  fortunes ;  most  of  them  died  broke. 
Well,  I  reckon  they  had  a  good  run  for  their 
money,  eh  ?" 

"And  when  did  it  end?"  asked  the  Mandan 
friend,  who  had  sat  an  absorbed  listener  to  a 
story,  the  most  of  which  was  new  to  him. 

"It  has  not  ended  yet,"  answered  Uncle  Dick. 
"St.  Louis  is  to-day  the  greatest  fur  market  in 
the  world,  though  now  skunk  and  coon  and 
rat  have  taken  the  place  of  beaver  and  buffalo 
and  wolf.  But  within  the  past  four  years  a 
muskrat  pelt  has  sold  for  five  dollars.  In  1832 
the  average  price  for  the  previous  fifteen  years 
had  been  twenty  cents  for  a  rat  hide — many  a 
boy  in  my  time  thought  he  was  rich  if  he  got 
ten  cents.  A  buffalo  robe  averaged  three  dol- 
lars ;  a  beaver  pelt,  four  dollars ;  an  otter,  three 
dollars.  Think  of  what  they  bring  now !  Well, 
the  demand  combs  the  country,  that's  all. 

"But  in  1836  beaver  slumped — because  that 
was  the  year  the  silk  hat  was  invented.  Did 
you  know  that?  And  in  1883  the  buffalo  robes 

164 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

ended.  Yd  say  that  1850  really  was  about  the 
end  of  the  big  days  of  the  early  fur  trade — 
wha£  we  call  the  upper-river  trade." 

Rob  put  his  hand  down  over  the  map.  "And 
here  it  was,"  said  he,  "in  this  country  west 
of  here,  up  the  Yellowstone,  up  the  Missouri, 
all  over  and  in  between !" 

"Quite  right,  yes,"  his  companion  nodded. 
"Of  all  the  days  of  romance  and  adventure  in 
the  Far  West,  those  were  the  times  and  this 
was  the  place — from  here  west,  up  the  great 
waterway  and  its  branches. 

"No  one  can  estimate  the  value  of  the  Mis- 
souri River  to  the  United  States.  It  made 
more  history  for  us  than  the  Mississippi  itself. 
It  made  our  first  maps — the  fur  trade  did  that. 
It  led  us  across  and  got  us  Oregon.  It  led  us 
to  the  placers  which  settled  Montana.  It  took 
the  first  horses  and  wagons  and  plows  into  the 
upper  country  in  its  day,  as  well  as  the  first 
rifles  and  steel  traps.  It  brought  us  into  war 
with  the  Indians,  and  helped  us  win  the  war. 
It  carried  our  hunters  up  to  the  buffalo,  and 
carried  all  the  buffalo  down,  off  from  the  face 
of  the  earth.  And  it  rolls  and  boils  and 
tumbles  on  its  way  now  as  it  did  when  the  great 
bateaux  swept  down  its  flood,  over  a  hundred 
miles  a  day,  loaded  with  robes  and  furs." 

165 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"I  wish  we  could  see  it  all !"  grumbled  Jesse, 
again. 

"You  can  see  it  all  now,  Jess,"  said  his  uncle, 
"better  than  you  could  if  you  plugged  up  its 
stream  without  looking  at  a  map  or  book.  And 
even  if  you  did  look  at  both,  you've  got  to  see 
the  many  different  periods  the  old  Missouri 
has  had  in  its  history,  and  balance  one  against 
the  other. 

"Dates  are  not  of  so  much  importance,  but 
reasons  for  great  changes  are  important.  If 
I  had  to  select  just  one  date  in  Western  history, 
do  you  know  what  that  would  be?" 

"Eighteen  hundred  and  four,  when  our  men 
started  up  with  the  flag !"  said  Rob. 

Uncle  Dick  shook  his  head. 

"Eighteen  hundred  and  six,  when  they  got 
back,"  ventured  Jesse. 

"No." 

"Eighteen  hundred  and  forty-eight,  when 
they  found  gold  in  California !"  said  John. 

"No!  Great  years,  yes,  and  the  discovery 
of  gold  was  a  great  event  in  changing  all  the 
country.  But  to  the  man  who  really  has  studied 
all  the  story  of  the  Missouri  River,  I  believe 
that  the  year  1836  was  about  the  pivotal  date. 
And  it  only  marks  the  invention  of  the  silk 
hat !  But  that  year  the  plow  began  to  take  the 

166 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

place  of  the  steel  trap  in  the  way  of  making  a 
living  in  the  West.  That  was  the  year,  I  might 
say,  when  the  mystery  and  romance  of  the 
unknown  West  found  their  end,  and  the  day 
began  of  what  we  call  business  and  civilization. 

"That's  all.  Go  to  bed,  fellows.  Our  friend 
has  been  most  kind  to  us,  and  we  have  to  get 
him  a  good  breakfast  in  the  morning,  since  he 
must  leave  us  then." 

The  Mandan  friend  rose  and  put  out  his 
hand.  "I  want  to  thank  you,  sir,"  he  said. 
"I'm  in  your  debt.  I  wish  my  own  boys  were 
along  with  this  party." 

The  next  day  they  parted  and  the  young 
Alaskans  were  speeding  west  by  rail,  making 
the  great  jump  of  about  six  hundred  miles, 
between  the  mouth  of  the  Yellowstone  and  the 
Great  Falls  of  the  Missouri. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

WHERE  THE  ROAD  FORKED 

"TV 7 ELL,  fellows,"  began  Rob,  "this  is  a 

\\  place  I've  always  wanted  to  see.  I've 
read  about  old  Fort  Benton  many  a  time.  Now, 
here  we  are!" 

The  little  party  stood  curiously  regarding  an 
old  and  well-nigh  ruined  square  structure  of 
sun-dried  brick,  not  far  from  which  lay  yet 
more  dilapidated  remnants  of  what  once  had 
been  the  walls  and  buildings  of  an  old  abode 
inclosure.  They  were  on  their  third  day  out 
from  the  mouth  of  the  Yellowstone  River,  hav- 
ing come  by  rail,  and  were  spending  the  day  at 
Fort  Benton,  between  the  junction  point  of 
Havre  and  the  modern  city  of  Great  Falls. 

"There's  not  much  of  it  left,"  scoffed  Jesse. 
"I  don't  call  this  so  much  of  a  fort.  You  could 
pretty  near  push  over  all  that's  left  of  it." 

"Not  so,  Jess,"  replied  Rob,  the  older  of  the 
three  boys.  "Nothing  can  push  over  the  walls 
of  old  Fort  Benton!  It  has  foundations  in 
history." 

"Oh,  history !"  said  Jesse.  "That's  all  right. 
168 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

But  I'm  sore  we  didn't  run  the  river  up  from 
Buford.  Just  when  we  hit  some  wild  stuff,  we 
take  the  cars!  Besides,  we  might  have  seen 
some  white  bears  or  some  bighorn  sheep." 

John  smiled  at  Jesse.  "Not  a  chance,  Jess," 
said  he,  "though  it's  true  we  have  jumped  over 
what  was  the  most  interesting  country  we  had 
struck  till  then — castles  and  towers  and  walls 
and  fortresses;  and  as  you  say,  plenty  of 
game.  Tell  him  about  it,  Uncle  Dick.  He's 
grouching." 

Uncle  Dick  smiled  and  put  his  hand  on 
Jesse's  curly  head.  "No,  he  isn't,"  said  he. 
"He  just  isn't  satisfied  with  jack  rabbits  where 
there  used  to  be  grizzlies  and  bighorns.  I 
don't  blame  him. 

"Yet  to  the  east  of  us,  to  the  end  of  the  river 
at  Buford,  to  the  south  along  the  Yellowstone, 
and  on  all  the  great  rivers  that  the  cowmen 
used  for  range — along  the  Little  Missouri  and 
the  Musselshell  and  the  Judith  and  countless 
other  streams  whose  names  you  have  heard — 
lay  the  greatest  game  country  the  world  ever 
saw,  the  best  outdoor  country  in  the  world ! 

"This  was  the  land  of  the  Wild  West  Indian 
and  buffalo  days,  so  wild  a  country  that  it 
never  lived  down  its  reputation.  Buffalo,  ante- 
lope, and  elk  ranged  in  common  in  herds  of 

169 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

hundreds  of  thousands,  while  in  the  rough 
shores  of  the  river  lived  countless  bighorns, 
hundreds  of  grizzlies,  and  a  like  proportion  of 
buffalo  and  antelope  as  well,  not  to  mention  the 
big  wolves  and  other  predatories.  Yes,  a  great 
wilderness  it  was !" 

"And  we  jumped  it!"  said  Jesse. 

"Yes,  because  I  knew  we'd  save  time,  and 
we  have  to  do  that,  for  we're  not  out  for  two 
years,  you  see. 

"Now  look  at  your  notes  and  at  the  Journal. 
It  took  Lewis  and  Clark  thirty-five  days  to  get 
here  from  the  mouth  of  the  Yellowstone,  and 
we've  done  it  in  one,  you  might  say.  The  rail- 
road calls  it  three  hundred  and  sixty-seven 
miles." 

"Well,  the  Journal  calls  it  more,"  broke  in 
Rob,  "yet  it  sticks  right  to  the  river." 

"And  now  they  began  to  travel,"  added  John. 
"They  did  twenty — eighteen — twenty-five — 
seventeen  miles  a  day  right  along,  more'n  they 
did  below  Mandan,  a  lot." 

"They  make  it  six  hundred  and  forty-one 
miles  from  the  Yellowstone  to  the  Marias, 
which  is  below  where  we  are  now.  That's 
about  eighteen  miles  a  day.  Yet  they  all  say 
the  river  current  is  much  stiffer." 

"We'd  have  found  it  stiff  in  places,"  said 
170 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

their  leader.  "But  the  reason  they  did  so  well 
— on  paper — was  that  now  they  couldn't  sail 
the  canoes  very  well,  and  so  did  a  great  deal  of 
towing.  The  shores  were  full  of  sharp  rocks 
and  the  going  was  rough,  and  they  had  only 
moccasins — they  complained  bitterly  of  sore 
feet. 

"Their  hardships  made  them  overestimate 
the  distances  they  did — and  they  did  over- 
estimate them,  very  much.  When  we  were 
tracking  up  on  the  Rat  Portage,  in  the  ice 
water,  at  the  Arctic  Circle,  don't  you  remem- 
ber we  figured  on  double  what  we  had  actually 
done?  A  man's  wife  corrected  him  on  how 
long  they  had  been  married.  He  said  it  was 
twenty  years,  and  she  said  it  was  ten,  by  the 
records.  'Well,  it  seems  longer/  he  said.  Same 
way,  when  they  did  ten  miles  a  day  stumbling 
on  the  tracking  line,  they  called  it  twenty.  It 
seemed  longer. 

"Now,  when  the  river  commission  measured 
these  distances  accurately,  they  called  it  seven- 
teen hundred  and  sixty  miles  from  the  mouth 
of  the  river  to  the  mouth  of  the  Yellowstone, 
and  not  eighteen  hundred,  as  the  Journal  has 
it.  And  from  Buford  to  Benton,  by  river,  is 
not  six  hundred  and  forty-one  miles,  as  the 
Journal  makes  it,  but  only  five  hundred  and 

12  171 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

three.  So  the  first  white  men  through  those 
canons  and  palisades  below  us  yonder  were 
one  hundred  and  thirty-eight  miles  over  in 
their  estimates,  or  more  than  one-fourth  of 
the  real  distance. 

"This  tendency  to  overestimate  distances  is 
almost  universal  among  explorers  who  set  the 
first  distances,  and  it  ought  to  be  reckoned  as 
a  factor  of  error,  like  the  dip  of  the  magnetic 
needle.  But  they  did  their  best.  And  we  want  to 
remember  that  they  were  the  first  white  men  to 
come  up  this  river,  whereas  we  are  the  last!" 

"Anyhow,"  resumed  Rob,  "we  are  at  old 
Ben  ton  now." 

"Yes,  and  I  think  even  Jesse  will  agree,  when 
we  stop  to  sum  up  here,  that  this  is  a  central 
point  in  every  way,  and  more  worth  while  as 
a  standing  place  that  any  we  would  have  passed 
in  the  river  had  we  run  it. 

"This  is  the  heart  of  the  buffalo  country, 
and  the  heart  of  the  old  Blackfoot  hunting 
range — the  most  dreaded  of  all  the  tribes  the 
early  traders  met.  We're  above  the  breaks 
of  the  Missouri  right  here.  Look  at  the  vast 
Plains.  This  was  the  buffalo  pasture  of  the 
Blackfeet.  The  Crows  lay  below,  on  the  Yel- 
lowstone. 

"Now  as  they  came  up  through  the  Bad 
172 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

Lands  and  the  upper  breaks  of  the  big  river, 
the  explorers  gave  names  to  a  lot  of  creeks 
and  buttes,  most  of  which  did  not  stick.  Two 
of  them  did  stick — the  Judith  and  the  Marias. 
Clark  called  the  first  Judith's  river,  after  Miss 
Julia  Hancock,  of  Virginia,  the  lady  whom  he 
later  married.  Her  friends  all  called  her  Judy, 
and  Clark  figured  it  ought  to  be  Judith. 

"In  the  same  way  Lewis  called  this  river, 
near  whose  mouth  we  now  are  standing, 
Maria's  River,  after  his  cousin,  Miss  Maria 
Wood.  Clark's  river,  famous  in  military  days, 
and  now  famous  as  the  wheat  belt  of  the  Judith 
Basin,  lost  the  possessive  and  is  now  plain 
Judith.  That  of  Meriwether  Lewis  still  has  all 
the  letters,  but  is  spelled  Marias  River,  with- 
out the  possessive  apostrophe.  So  these  stand 
even  to-day,  the  names  of  two  Virginia  girls, 
and  no  doubt  will  remain  there  while  the  water 
runs  or  the  grass  grows,  as  the  Indians  say/' 

"But  even  now  you've  forgotten  something, 
Uncle  Dick,"  interrupted  John.  "You  said  this 
was  the  Forks  of  the  Road.  How  do  you 
mean?" 

"Yes.  This  later  proved  one  of  the  great 
strategic  points  of  the  West.  As  you  know, 
this  was  the  head  of  steamboat  navigation, 
and  the  outfitting  point  for  the  bull  trains  that 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

supplied  all  the  country  west  and  south  and 
north  of  us.  No  old  post  is  more  famous.  But 
that  is  not  all. 

"I  have  reference  now,  really,  not  to  Fort 
Benton,  but  to  the  mouth  of  the  Marias  River, 
below  here.  Now,  see  how  nearly,  even  to-day, 
the  Marias  resembles  the  Missouri  River.  Sup- 
pose you  were  captain,  Jess,  and  you  had  no 
map  and  nothing  to  go  by,  and  you  came  to 
these  two  rivers  and  didn't  have  any  idea  on 
earth  which  was  the  one  coming  closest  to  the 
Columbia,  and  had  no  idea  where  either  of 
them  headed — now,  what  would  you  do?" 

"Huh!"  answered  Jesse,  with  no  hesitation 
at  all.  "I  know  what  I'd  have  done." 

"Yes?    What,  then?" 

"Why,  I'd  have  asked  that  Indian  girl,  Sac- 
agawea,  that's  what  I'd  have  done.  She  knew 
all  this  country,  you  say." 

"By  Jove !  Not  a  bit  bad,  Jess,  come  to  think 
of  it  But  look  at  your  Journal.  You'll  find 
that  at  precisely  the  first  time  they  needed  to 
ask  her  something  they  could  not!  The  girl 
was  very  sick,  from  here  to  above  the  Great 
Falls.  They  thought  she  was  going  to  die,  and 
it's  a  wonder  she  didn't,  when  you  read  what 
all  they  gave  her  by  way  of  medicines.  She 
was  out  of  her  head  part  of  the  time.  They 

i74 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

never  asked  her  a  thing  on  the  choice  of  these 
rivers ! 

"Well  now,  what  did  they  do?  They  spent 
more  than  a  week  deciding,  and  it  was  time 
well  spent.  They  sent  out  small  parties  up 
each  fork  a  little  way,  and  the  men  all  thought 
the  Marias,  or  right-hand  fork,  was  the  true 
Missouri.  Then  Clark  was  sent  up  the  south 
fork,  which  was  clearer  than  the  other.  He 
went  thirty-five  miles.  If  he  had  gone  twenty 
miles  farther,  he'd  have  been  at  the  Great 
Falls ;  and  the  Minnetaree  Indians  had  told  of 
those  falls,  and  of  an  eagle's  nest  there,  though 
they  said  nothing  about  the  river  to  the  north. 
Chaboneau  had  never  been  here.  His  wife 
was  nearly  dead.  No  one  could  help. 

"Lewis  took  a  few  men  and  went  up  the 
Marias  for  about  sixty  miles.  They  came 
back  down  the  Marias,  and  decided  on  the  left- 
hand  fork,  against  the  judgment  of  every  man 
but  Clark. 

"His  reasoning  is  good.  The  men  all  pointed 
out  that  the  right-hand  fork  was  roily,  boiling, 
and  rolling,  exactly  like  the  Missouri  up  which 
they  had  come,  whereas  the  other  fork  was 
clear.  But  Lewis  said  that  this  showed  that 
the  Marias  ran  through  plains  country  and  did 
not  lead  close  to  the  Rockies,  from  which  the 

i75 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

water  would  run  clearer;  and  they  did  not 
want  to  skirt  the  mountains  northerly,  but 
to  cross  them,  going  west. 

"Lewis  had  an  old  English  map,  made  by  a 
man  named  Arrowsmith,  based  on  reports  of 
a  Hudson's  Bay  trader  named  Fidler,  who  had 
gone  a  little  south  of  the  Saskatchewan  and 
made  some  observations.  Now  look  at  your 
Journal,  and  see  what  Lewis  thought  of  Mr. 
Fidler. 

"The  latter  marked  a  detached  peak  at  forty- 
five  degrees  latitude.  Yet  Lewis — who  all  this 
time  has  been  setting  down  his  own  latitude 
and  longitude  from  his  frequent  observations 
— makes  the  Marias  as  forty-seven  degrees, 
twenty-four  minutes,  twelve  and  eight-tenths 
seconds.  He  says: 

"  'The  river  must  therefore  turn  much  to  the  south 
between  this  and  the  rocky  mountain  to  have  permitted 
Mr.  Fidler  to  have  passed  along  the  eastern  border  of 
these  mountains  as  far  south  as  nearly  45°  without  even 
seeing  it.  ...  Capt.  Clark  says  its  course  is  S.29  W. 
and  it  still  appeared  to  bear  considerably  to  the  W.  of 
South.  ...  I  think  therefore  that  we  shall  find  that  the 
Missouri  enters  the  rocky  mountains  to  the  North  of 
45°.  We  did  take  the  liberty  of  placing  his  discoveries 
or  at  least  the  Southern  extremity  of  them  about  a 
degree  farther  North  .  .  .  and  I  rather  suspect  that 
actual  observations  will  take  him  at  least  one  other 
degree  further  North.  The  general  course  of  Marias 
river  ...  is  69°  W.  59V  " 

176 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"Lewis  also  figured  that  Fidler  in  his  map 
showed  only  small  streams  coming  in  from  the 
west,  'and  the  presumption  is  very  strong  that 
those  little  streams  do  not  penetrate  the  Rocky 
Mountains  to  such  distance  as  would  afford 
rational  grounds  for  a  conjecture  that  they  had 
their  sources  near  any  navigable  branch  of 
the  Columbia/  He  was  right  in  that — and  he 
says  those  little  creeks  may  run  into  a  river  the 
Indians  called  the  Medicine  River.  Now  that 
is  the  Sun  River,  which  does  come  in  at  the 
Falls,  but  which  Lewis  had  never  seen ! 

"Again,  the  Minnetaree  Indians  had  told 
him,  in  their  long  map-making  talks  at  the 
Mandan  winter  quarters,  that  the  river  near 
the  Falls  was  clear,  as  he  now  saw  this  stream. 
The  Minnetarees  told  him  the  Missouri  River 
interlocked  with  the  Columbia.  And  as  he 
was  now  straight  west  of  the  Minnetarees, 
he  figured  that  when  they  went  hunting  to  the 
head  of  the  Missouri,  as  they  had,  they  couldn't 
have  passed  a  river  big  as  this  south  fork 
without  mentioning  it.  And  the  Indians  said 
that  the  Falls  were  a  'little  south  of  the  sun- 
set' from  the  Mandans — and  Lewis  had  his 
latitude  to  show  he  was  still  on  that  line  and 
ought  to  hold  to  it. 

"Lastly,  he  reasoned  that  so  large  a  river 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

must  penetrate  deeply  into  the  Rockies — and 
that  was  what  he  wanted.  He  knew  it  could 
not  rise  in  dry  plains.  So,  relying  on  his  Minne- 
tarees  and  his  horse  sense,  and  not  on  Mr. 
Fidler,  Lewis  refused  to  go  any  farther  north, 
because  he  could  not  figure  out  there  a  big 
river  penetrating  into  the  Rockies.  He  was 
absolutely  right,  as  well  as  very  shrewd  and 
wise. 

"Now,  reasoning  at  first  shot,  the  voyageurs 
would  have  gone  up  the  Marias.  Cruzatte 
especially,  their  best  riverman,  was  certain  the 
Marias  was  the  true  Missouri.  They  would 
then  maybe  have  met  the  Blackfeet  and  would 
never  have  crossed  the  Rockies;  which  would 
have  meant  failure,  if  not  death ;  whereas  this 
cold-headed,  careful  young  man,  Meriwether 
Lewis,  by  a  chain  of  exact  reasoning  on  actual 
data,  went  against  the  judgment  of  the  entire 
party  and  chose  the  left-hand  fork,  which  we 
know  is  the  true  Missouri ;  and  which  we'll  find 
hard  enough  to  follow  to  its  head,  even  to-day. 

"Think  over  that,  boys.  Do  you  begin  to 
see  what  a  man  must  be,  to  be  a  leader  ?  We 
have  had  plenty  of  Army  men  in  Western  ex- 
ploration since  then,  plenty  of  engineers  who 
could  spell.  But  in  all  the  records  you'll  not 
find  one  example  of  responsibility  handled  as 

178 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

quietly  and  decisively  as  that.  You  must  re- 
member the  pressure  he  was  under.  It  would 
have  been  so  easy  to  take  the  united  conviction 
of  all  these  old,  grizzled,  experienced  voyageurs 
and  hunters. 

"Well,  if  Clark  and  he  argued  over  it,  at 
least  that  is  not  known.  But  all  the  men  took 
the  decision  of  the  two  leaders  without  a  whim- 
per. I  think  the  personnel  of  that  party  must 
have  been  extraordinary.  And  their  leaders 
proved  their  judgment  later. 

"Now,  with  poor  Sacagawea  expected  to 
die,  and  with  all  the  responsibility  on  their 
shoulders,  our  captains  acted  as  though  they 
had  no  doubts.  If  they  did  have,  Lewis  solved 
it  all  when  he  ascended  the  Marias  on  his  way 
home  next  year. 

"Now  the  water  was  getting  swift.  They 
knew  nothing  of  what  was  ahead,  but  their  load 
was  heavy.  So  now  they  hid  their  biggest 
boat  in  the  willows  on  an  island,  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Marias,  and  dug  a  cache  for  a  great  deal 
of  their  outfit — axes,  ammunition,  casks  of 
provisions,  and  much  superfluous  stuff.  They 
dug  this  bottle  shaped,  as  the  old  fur  traders 
did,  lined  it  with  boughs  and  grass  and  hides, 
filled  it  in  and  put  back  the  cap  sod — all  the 
dirt  had  been  piled  on  skins,  so  as  not  to  show. 

179 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

Stores  would  keep  for  years  when  buried  care- 
fully in  this  way. 

"So  now,  lighter  of  load,  but  still  game — 
with  Cruzatte  playing  the  fiddle  for  the  men 
to  dance  of  evenings — on  June  12th  they  'set 
out  and  proceeded  on/  leaving  this  great  and 
historical  fork  of  the  water  road  on  the  morn- 
ing of  June  12th,  with  Sacagawea  so  very  sick 
that  the  captains  took  tender  care  of  her  all 
the  trip,  though  they  speak  slightingly  of  Cha- 
boneau,  her  husband,  who  seems  to  have  been 
a  bit  of  a  mutt.  One  of  the  men  has  a  felon 
on  his  hand ;  another  with  toothache  has  taken 
cold  in  his  jaw;  another  has  a  tumor  and  an- 
other a  fever.  Three  canoes  came  near  being 
lost;  and  it  rained.  But  they  "proceeded  on/ 
and  on  that  day  they  first  saw  the  Rockies,  full 
and  fair!  And  three  days  later  Lewis  found 
the  Great  Falls,  hearing  the  noise  miles  away, 
and  seeing  the  great  cloud  of  mist  arising 
above  the  main  fall. 

"And  then  they  found  the  eagle's  nest  on  the 
cottonwood  island,  of  which  the  Minnetarees 
had  told  them.  And  then  Sacagawea  got  well, 
and  gave  the  O.K.  after  her  delirium  had  gone ! 
And  then  every  man,  woman,  and  child  in 
that  party  agreed  that  their  leaders  were  safe 
to  follow ! 

180 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"It  took  them  one  month  to  get  over  that 
eighteen  miles  portage.  *  That  made  five  weeks 
they  had  lost  here  out  of  direct  travel.  But 
they  never  did  lose  courage,  never  did  reason 
wrong,  and  never  did  go  back  one  foot.  Lead- 
ership, my  boys!  And  both  those  captains, 
Lewis  especially,  had  a  dozen  close  calls  for 
death,  with  bears,  floods,  rattlesnakes,  gun- 
shot, and  accidents  of  all  kinds.  Their  poor 
men  also  were  in  bad  case  many  a  time,  but 
they  held  through.  No  more  floggings  now, 
this  side  of  Mandan — maybe  both  men  and 
captains  had  learned  something  about  dis- 
cipline." 

Their  leader  ceased  for  the  time,  and  turned, 
hat  in  hand,  to  the  ruined  quadrangle  of  adobe, 
the  remnants  of  old  Fort  Benton.  The  boys 
also  for  a  moment  remained  silent.  Jesse  ap- 
proached and  touched  the  sleeve  of  his  Uncle 
Dick. 

"I  wouldn't  have  missed  this  for  anything," 
said  he.  "I  can  see  how  they  all  must  have  felt 
when  they  got  here,  where  they  could  see  out 
over  the  country  once  more.  Do  you  suppose 
it  was  right  here  that  tHey  stood?" 

John  was  ready  with  his  copy  of  the  Journal, 
which  now  the  boys  all  began  to  prize  more 
and  more. 

181 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"Here  it  is,"  said  he,  "all  set  down  in  the 
finest  story  book  I  ever  read  in  all  my  life. 
Captain  Lewis  and  Captain  Clark  say  they 

"  'stroled  out  to  the  top  of  the  hights  in  the  fork  of 
these  rivers,  from  whence  we  had  an  extensive  and 
most  inchanting  view.  The  country  in  every  direction 
about  was  one  vast  plain  in  which  innumerable  herds 
of  Buffalo w  were  seen  attended  by  their  shepperds  the 
wolves;  the  solatary  antalope  which  now  had  there 
young  were  distributed  over  its  face,  some  herds  of 
Elk  were  also  seen ;  the  verdure  perfectly  cloathed  the 
ground,  the  wether  was  plesent  and  fair ;  to  the  South 
we  saw  a  range  of  lofty  mountains  which  we  supposed 
to  be  a  continuation  of  the  Snow  Mountains  stretching 
themselves  from  S.E.  to  N.W.  terminating  abruptly 
about  S.West  from  us,  these  were  partially  covered 
with  snow ;  behind  these  Mountains  and  at  a  great  dis- 
tance a  second  and  more  lofty  range  of  mountains  ap- 
peared to  strech  across  the  country  in  the  same  direc- 
tion with  the  others,  reaching  from  West,  to  the  N. 
of  N.W. — where  their  snowy  tops  lost  themselves  be- 
neath the  horizon,  the  last  range  was  perfectly  covered 
with  snow.' >: 

"Does  it  check  up,  boys?"  Uncle  Dick  smiled. 
"I  think  it  does,  except  that  our  old  ruins  are 
not  right  where  they  then  stood  on  the  Mis- 
souri. The  river  mouth  is  below  here.  There 
is  a  high  tongue  of  land  between  the  Teton 
River,  just  over  there,  where  it  runs  close  along 
the  Missouri,  two  or  three  hundred  yards  away, 
but  I  hardly  think  that  was  where  they  stood. 

182 


ON  TtfE  MISSOURI 

"But  though  the  works  of  man  have  changed 
many  times,  and  themselves  been  changed  by 
time,  the  works  of  God  are  here,  as  they  were 
in  June  of  1805 — except  that  the  wild  game  is 
gone  forever. 

"Lewis  or  Clark  could  not  dream  that  in 
1812  a  steamboat  would  go  down  the  Ohio  and 
the  Mississippi ;  nor  that  some  day  a  steamboat 
would  land  here,  close  to  the  Marias  River. 

"But  after  Lewis  and  Clark  the  fur  traders 
poured  up  here.  Then  came  the  skin  hunters 
and  their  Mackinaws,  following  the  bull  boats 
which  took  some  voyageurs  downstream.  Then 
the  river  led  the  trails  west,  and  the  bull  out- 
fits followed  the  pack  trains.  So  when  the 
adventurers  found  gold  at  the  head  of  the  Mis- 
souri they  had  a  lane  well  blazed,  surely. 

"Fort  Ben  ton  was  not  by  any  means  the  first 
post  to  be  located  at  or  near  this  great  point, 
the  mouth  of  the  Marias.  In  1831  James  Kipp, 
the  father  of  my  friend,  Joe  Kipp,  put  up  a 
post  here,  but  he  did  not  try  to  hold  it.  The 
next  year  D.  D.  Mitchell  built  Fort  McKenzie, 
about  six  miles  above  the  Marias,  on  the  left 
bank — quite  a  stiff  fort,  one  hundred  and 
twenty  by  one  hundred  and  forty  feet,  stock- 
aded— and  this  stuck  till  1843.  Then  their  con- 
tinual troubles  with  the  Blackf eet  drove  them 

183 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

out.  Then  there  was  Fort  Lewis,  in  the  neigh- 
borhood, somewhere,  in  1845. 

"Fort  Benton  was  put  up  in  1850.  And  as 
the  early  stockades  of  Booneville  and  Har rods- 
burg  and  Nashville  in  Kentucky  were  on  'Dark 
and  bloody  ground/  so  ought  the  place  where 
we  now  are  standing  be  called  the  dark  and 
bloody  ground  of  the  Missouri  River,  for  this 
indeed  was  a  focus  of  trouble  and  danger,  even 
before  the  river  trade  made  Benton  a  tough 
town." 

"Well,  the  glory  of  old  Benton  is  gone!" 
said  Rob,  at  last.  "Just  the  same,  I  am  glad  we 
came  here.  So  this  is  all  there  is  left  of  it!" 

"Yes,  all  there  is  left  of  the  one  remaining 
bastion,  or  corner  tower.  It  was  not  built  of 
timber,  but  of  adobe,  which  lasted  better  and 
was  as  good  a  defense  and  better.  Many  a  time 
the  men  of  Benton  have  flocked  down  to  meet 
the  boat,  wherever  she  was  able  to  land;  and 
many  a  wild  time  was  here — for  in  steamboat 
days  alcohol  was  a  large  part  of  every  cargo. 
The  last  of  the  robes  were  traded  for  in  alcohol, 
very  largely.  And  by  1883,  after  the  rails 
had  come  below,  the  last  of  the  hides  were 
stripped  from  the  last  of  the  innumerable  herds 
of  buffalo  that  Lewis  and  Clark  saw  here,  at 
the  great  fork  of  the  road  into  the  Rockies; 

184 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

and  soon  the  last  pelt  was  baled  from  the 
beaver.  If  you  go  to  the  Blackfeet  now  you 
find  them  a  thinned  and  broken  people,  and 
the  highest  ambition  of  their  best  men  is  to 
dress  up  in  modern  beef-hide  finery  and  play 
circus  Indian  around  the  park  hotels. 

"Well,  this  was  their  range,  young  excel- 
lencies, and  this  was  the  head  of  the  disputed 
ground  between  the  Crows,  Nez  Perces,  Flat- 
heads,  and  Shoshonis,  all  of  whom  knew  good 
buffalo  country  when  they  saw  it. 

"And  yet,  what  luck  our  first  explorers  had ! 
They  surely  did  have  luck,  for  they  had  good 
guidance  of  the  Minnetarees  among  the  Man- 
dans,  and  then,  from  the  time  they  left  the 
Mandans  until  the  next  fall,  beyond  the  Three 
Forks  of  the  Missouri,  they  never  saw  an 
Indian  of  any  sort!  At  the  Great  Falls,  a 
great  hunting  place,  they  found  encampments 
not  more  than  ten  days  or  so  old,  but  not  a 
soul. 

"Thus  endeth  the  lesson  for  to-day!  I'm 
sorry  we  haven't  a  camp  to  go  to  to-night  in- 
stead of  a  hotel,  but  I  promise  to  mend  that 
matter  for  you  in  a  day  or  so,  if  Billy  Williams 
is  up  from  Bozeman  with  his  pack  train,  as  I 
wired  him.  I  said  the  fifteenth,  and  this  is  the 
thirteenth,  so  we've  two  days  for  the  Falls.  I 

185 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

wish  we  didn't  know  where  they  were !    I  wish 
I  didn't  know  the  Marias  isn't  the  Missouri.    I 
wish — well,  at  least  I  can  wish  that  old  Fort 
Benton  was  here  and  the  whistle  of  the  steam- 
boat was  blowing  around  the  bend!" 
"Don't,  sir !"  said  Rob.    "Please  don't !" 
"No,"  said  John.    "To-day  is  to-day." 
"All  the  same,"  said  Jesse,  "all  the  same " 


CHAPTER  XIX 

AT  THE  GREAT  FALLS 

"HPHE  only  thing,"  said  Jesse,  as  the  three 

JL  young  companions  later  stood  together 
on  the  bank  of  the  river,  looking  out ;  "the  only 
thing  is " 

He  did  not  finish  his  sentence,  but  stood,  his 
hands  thrust  into  the  side  pockets  of  his  jacket, 
his  face  not  wholly  happy. 

"Yes,  Jesse;  but  what  is  the  only  thing?" 
John  smiled,  and  Rob,  tall  and  neat  in  his  Scout 
uniform,  also  smiled  as  he  turned  to  the  young- 
est of  their  party.  They  were  alone,  Uncle 
Dick  having  gone  to  town  to  see  about  the  pack 
train.  They  had  walked  up  from  their  camp 
below  the  flourishing  city  of  Great  Falls. 

"Well,  it's  all  right,  I  suppose,"  replied  Jesse. 
"I  suppose  they  have  to  have  cities,  of  course. 
I  suppose  they  have  to  have  those  big  smelters 
over  there  and  all  those  other  things.  Maybe 
it's  not  the  same.  The  buffalo  are  not  here, 
nor  the  elk — though  the  Journal  says  hundreds 
of  buffalo  were  washed  over  the  falls  and 
drowned,  right  along.  Then,  the  bears  are 
13  187 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

not  here  any  more,  though  it  was  right  here 
that  they  were  worst;  they  had  to  fight  them 
all  the  time,  and  the  only  wonder  was  that  no 
one  was  killed,  for  those  bears  were  bad,  be- 
lieve me " 

"Sure,  they  must  have  been,"  assented  John. 
"There  were  so  many  dead  buffalo,  below  the 
falls,  where  they  washed  ashore,  that  the  griz- 
zlies came  in  flocks,  and  didn't  want  to  be  dis- 
turbed or  driven  away  from  their  grub.  And 
these  were  the  first  boats  that  ever  had  come 
up  that  river,  the  first  white  men.  So  they 
jumped  them.  Why,  over  yonder  above  the 
falls  were  the  White  Bear  Islands;  so  many 
bears  on  them,  they  kept  the  camp  so  scared  up 
all  the  time,  they  had  to  make  up  a  boat  party 
and  go  over  and  hunt  them  off.  They  used  to 
swim  this  river  like  it  was  a  pond,  those  bears ! 
They  kept  the  party  on  the  alert  all  day  and  all 
night.  They  had  a  dozen  big  fights  with  them." 

"Humph !"  Jesse  waved  an  arm  to  the  broad 
expanse  of  flat  water  above  the  great  dam  of 
the  power  company.  "Is  that  so  ?  Well,  that's 
what  I  mean.  Where's  the  big  tree  with  the 
black  eagle's  nest?  How  do  we  know  this  is 
the  big  portage  of  the  Missouri  at  all?  No 
islands,  no  eagle.  Yet  you  know  very  well  it 
was  the  sight  of  that  eagle's  nest  that  made 

188 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

Lewis  and  Clark  know  for  sure  that  they  were 
on  the  right  river.  The  Indians  didn't  say  any- 
thing about  the  Marias  River  being  there  at 
all;  they  never  mentioned  that  to  either  Clark 
or  Lewis  when  they  made  their  maps  in  the 
winter  with  the  Mandans.  But  they  did  men- 
tion that  eagle  nest  on  the  island  at  the  big 
falls — they  thought  everybody  would  notice 
that — and  when  you  come  to  think  of  it,  that 
did  nail  the  thing  to  the  map — no  getting 
around  the  nest  on  the  island  at  the  falls. 

"Oh,  I  suppose  this  town's  all  right,  way 
towns  go.  Only  thing  is,  they  ought  not  to 
have  spoiled  the  island  and  the  eagle  nest  with 
their  old  dam.  How  do  we  know  this  is  the 
place?" 

"Well,  we'll  have  to  chance  that,  Jess,"  said 
Rob.  "Quite  a  drop  here,  anyhow,  all  these 
cascades.  If  we'd  brought  the  Adventurer  all 
the  way  up  the  river  from  Mandan,  and  got 
to  the  head  of  the  rapids,  I  guess  we'd  think  it 
was  the  place  to  portage." 

"Yes;  and  where'd  we  get  any  cottonwood 
tree  around  here,  to  cut  off  wheels  for  our 
boat  wagon?"  demanded  John.  "Eighteen 
miles  and  more,  it  was,  that  they  portaged, 
after  they'd  dug  their  second  big  cache  and  hid 
their  stuff  and  covered  up  the  white  perogue 

189 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

at  the  head  of  their  perogue  navigation  (they'd 
left  the  big  red  perogue  at  the  Marias). 

"And  it  took  them  a  solid  month  to  do  that 
eighteen  miles.  The  little  old  portage  right 
here  was  the  solidest  jolt  they'd  had,  all  the 
way  up  the  river  to  here — two  thousand  five 
hundred  and  ninety-three  miles  they  called  it, 
to  the  mouth  of  the  Medicine  River;  which 
means  the  Sun  River,  that  comes  in  just  above 
the  falls.  Portage?  Well,  I'll  call  it  some 
portage,  even  for  us,  if  we  had  to  make  it !" 

"Huh !  Dray  her  out  and  put  her  on  bicycle 
wheels  and  hitch  her  to  a  flivver  and  haul  her 
around — two  or  three  whole  hours!  Mighty 
risky  and  adventurous,  isn't  it?  I  want  my 
bears!  Especially  I  want  my  eagle!  I've 
been  counting  on  that  old  black  eagle,  all  the 
way  up,  cordelling  from  the  mouth  of  the 
Yellowstone." 

"Well,"  resumed  Rob,  "at  least  they've 
named  the  Black  Eagle  Falls  here  after  him. 
They've  honored  him  with  a  dam  and  a  bridge 
and  a  power  house  and  a  smelter  and  a  few 
such  things.  And  if  we'd  got  here  a  little 
earlier — any  time  up  to  1866  or  1872,  or  even 
later,  maybe,  we'd  have  seen  Mr.  Eagle, 
and  he'd  have  shown  us  that  this  was  his 
place." 

190 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"I  know  it!"  broke  in  John.  "You  didn't 
get  that  from  the  Journal.  That's  another 
book,  later."1 

"Well,  it  said  that  Captain  Reynolds  of  the 
army  saw  that  eagle  nest  on  the  cottonwood 
tree  on  the  island  in  1866,  and  he  thought  it 
like  enough  was  Lewis's  eagle.  And  then  in 
1872  T.  P.  Roberts,  in  his  survey,  was  just 
below  those  falls,  and  a  big  eagle  sailed  out 
from  its  nest  in  the  old  broken  cottonwood,  on 
the  island  below  the  falls,  and  it  tackled  him ! 
He  says  it  came  and  lit  on  the  ground  near 
him  and  showed  fight.  Then  it  flew  around, 
not  ten  feet  away,  and  dropped  its  claws 
almost  in  his  face.  He  was  going  to  shoot  it. 
One  of  his  men  did  shoot  at  it.  Well,  I  sup- 
pose some  fellow  did  shoot  it,  not  long  after 
that.  I'd  not  like  to  have  the  thought  on  my 
mind  that  I'd  been  the  man  to  kill  the  Meri- 
wether  Lewis  black  eagle."  Rob  spoke  seri- 
ously, and  added: 

"Yet  in  Alaska  the  government  pays  a  fifty- 
cent  bounty  on  eagle  heads,  and  they  killed  six 
thousand  in  one  year — maybe  several  times 
that,  in  all,  for  all  I  know — because  the  eagles 
eat  salmon !  Well,  that  didn't  save  the  salmon. 
The  Fraser  River,  even,  isn't  a  salmon  river 

1  Trail  of  Lewis  and  Clark,  Olin  D.  Wheeler,  1904. 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

any  more;  and  you  know  how  our  canneries 
have  dropped." 

"Poor  old  eagle!"  said  Jesse.  "Well,  for 
one,  I  refuse  to  believe  that  this  is  the  Big 
Portage.  Nothing  to  identify  it." 

"Not  much,"  admitted  Rob.  "Not  very  much 
now.  The  falls  that  Roberts  named  the  Black 
Eagle  Falls  are  wiped  out  by  the  dam.  The 
island  is  gone,  the  cottonwood  is  gone,  the 
eagle  and  his  mate  are  gone.  That's  the  upper- 
most fall  of  the  five.  It's  inside  the  city  limits, 
where  we  are  now." 

"She  was  just  twenty-six  feet  five  inches 
of  a  drop,"  said  the  exact  John.  "Clark  meas- 
ured them  all,  the  whole  five  of  them,  with 
the  spirit  level.  They  call  the  little  fellow,  only 
six  feet  seven  inches,  the  Colter  Falls,  after 
John  Colter,  one  of  the  expedition — only  Lewis 
and  Clark  didn't  name  it  at  all,  for  Colter 
hadn't  become  famous  then  as  the  discoverer 
of  the  Yellowstone. 

"Lewis  liked  the  big  Rainbow  Fall  about 
the  best  of  the  lot — it  was  so  clean  cut,  all  the 
way  across  the  river.  He  named  that  one,  and 
it  stuck.  He  named  the  Crooked  Falls,  too, 
and  that  stuck.  It  must  have  been  natural  for 
somebody  to  name  the  Great  Falls,  because  the 
drop  there  is  eighty-seven  feet  and  three- 

192 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

fourths  of  an  inch,  as  Clark  made  it  with  his 
little  old  hand  level.  But  they  didn't  name  the 
big  fall,  though  they  did  the  Crooked,  which  is 
only  nineteen  feet  high." 

"Lewis  saw  the  rainbow  below  this  fall," 
said  Jesse.  Of  course,  that's  why  he  named  it. 
We  could  go  down  the  stair  easily  and  see  it, 
if  we  wanted  to.  If  it's  the  same  rainbow,  and 
if  it's  still  there,  the  only  reason  is  they  couldn't 
melt  up  the  rainbow  and  sell  it,  somehow.  I 
don't  want  to  see  it.  I  don't  care  about  all  the 
smelters.  I  want  my  old  cottonwood  tree  and 
my  island  and  my  eagle! 

"I  wonder  who  killed  the  eagle!"  he  went 
on.  "Probably  he  threw  it  in  the  river  and  let 
it  float  over  the  falls.  Maybe  some  section 
hand  stuck  a  feather  of  that  eagle  in  his  hat 
and  called  it  macaroni!  For  me,  I'm  never 
going  to  shoot  at  an  eagle  again,  not  in  all  my 
life." 

"Nor  am  I,"  nodded  Rob,  gravely. 

"Neither  shall  I,"  John  also  agreed. 

"Well,  at  least  the  rainbow  is  left,"  said 
Rob,  at  length,  "and  the  Big  Spring  that  Clark 
found  is  still  doing  business  at  the  edge  of  the 
river  below  the  smelter  above  the  Colter  Fall 
— cold  as  it  was  one  hundred  and  sixteen  years 
ago,  and  more  than  a  hundred  yards  across. 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

Nature  certainly  does  things  on  a  big  scale 
here.  What  a  sight  all  this  must  have  been 
to  those  explorers  who  were  the  first  to 
see  it ! 

"But,  so  far  as  that  goes,  talking  of  changes, 
I  don't  think  the  general  look  and  feel  of  this 
portage  has  changed  as  much  as  lots  of  the  flat 
country  away  down  the  river — Floyd's  Bluff, 
or  the  Mandan  villages,  lots  of  places  where 
the  river  cut  in.  Here  the  banks  are  hard  and 
rocky.  They  can't  have  altered  much.  It  was 
a  hard  enough  scramble  over  the  side  ravines, 
when  we  were  coming  up  from  camp,  wasn't 
it,  even  if  we  didn't  have  dugout  canoes  on 
cottonwood  solid  wheels  and  willow  axles — 
breaking  down  all  the  time  ?" 

"But,  Rob,  a  month — a  whole  month !"  said 
John.  "That  must  have  made  them  worry  a 
good  deal,  because  now  it  was  the  middle  of 
summer,  and  they  didn't  know  where  they  were 
going  or  how  they  would  get  across." 

"They  did  worry,  more  than  they  had  till 
then.  Now,  I  think  they  must  have  had  quite 
a  lot  of  stuff  along,  all  the  time.  They  had 
whisky,  for  instance — they  drank  the  last  of 
it  right  here  at  the  Great  Falls,  and  Uncle 
Dick  says  that  was  the  first  time  Montana 
went  dry !  They  had  a  grindstone.  And  they 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

had  an  iron  boat — or  the  iron  frame  of  a  boat 
— brought  it  all  the  ^yay  from  Harper's  Ferry, 
in  Virginia,  where  Lewis  had  it  made. 

"That  boat  was  the  only  bad  play  they  made. 
She  was  Lewis's  pet.  I  don't  know  why  they 
never  set  her  up  before,  but,  anyhow,  they  did, 
at  the  head  of  the  falls  here.  She  had  iron 
rods  for  gunwales,  and  they  spliced  willows 
to  stiffen  her.  She  was  thirty-six  feet  long, 
and  four  and  one-half  feet  beam,  a  couple  of 
feet  deep,  and  would  carry  all  their  cargo, 
while  a  few  men  could  carry  her.  You  see, 
Lewis  had  the  skin-boat  coracle  in  mind  before 
he  left  Washington. 

"Well,  Lewis  wanted  elk  hides  for  his  boat, 
and  the  elk  were  scarce;  he  had  his  men  out 
everywhere  after  elk  hides.  He  got  twenty- 
eight  hides,  and  took  off  the  hair,  and  that 
wasn't  enough;  so  he  took  four  buffalo  hides 
to  piece  her  out.  And  then  she  wouldn't  do! 
No.  Failure:  the  first  and  only  failure  of  a 
Lewis  and  Clark  outdoor  idea. 

"Well,  Lewis  was  fair  enough,  though  it 
mortified  him  to  lose  days  and  days  on  his  pet 
boat.  They  sewed  the  skins  with  edged  awls, 
and  that  cut  the  holes  rather  big,  so  when  the 
hides  dried  and  shrunk,  the  threads  didn't  fill 
the  holes  any  more.  He  had  no  tar  to  pay  the 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

seams  with,  or  he'd  have  been  all  right.  They 
tried  tallow  and  ashes,  but  it  wouldn't  work. 
For  a  few  minutes  she  sat  high  and  light ;  then 
the  filling  soaked  out.  Poor  Lewis! — he  had 
to  give  it  up.  So  they  buried  her,  somewhere 
opposite  -the  White  Bear  Islands,  I  suppose, 
where  they  had  their  camp." 

"Yes,  and  then  Clark  had  to  go  and  hustle 
cottonwood  for  some  more  dugouts,  and  cotton- 
wood  was  a  long,  long  way  off,"  contributed 
John.  "Oh,  they  had  their  troubles.  Hah! 
We  complained,  coming  up  Portage  Creek,  and 
over  the  heads  of  the  draws,  trying  to  find 
their  old  portage  trail.  What  if  we'd  been  in 
moccasins  ?  What  if  we'd  been  packing  a  hun- 
dred .pounds  or  dragging  at  a  hide  wagon  rope? 
And  what  if  the  buffalo  had  cut  up  the  ground 
in  rainy  times,  so  it  dried  in  little  pointed 
lumps  like  so  many  nails — how'd  that  go  in 
moccasins?  Well,  they  had  to  lie  down  and 
rest,  it  was  SQ  awfully  hard  on  them.  But  they 
never  a  one  flickered,  leader  or  enlisted  men, 
and  they  put  her  through !" 

"It  was  a  whole  month?"  queried  Jesse. 

"Yes,"  John  informed  him,  referring  to  the 
Journal  once  again.  "It  was  June  14th  when 
Shields  came  back  downstream  from  Lewis, 
and  told  Clark's  boat  party  that  they  had  found 

196 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

the  falls,  and  it  was  July  15th  when  they  got 
their  new  canoes  done  and  started  off  up  the 


river." 


"And  I'll  bet  they  were  fussed  up  about 
things/'  said  Jesse.  "Must  have  been  scared." 

"No,  I  don't  think  they  were,"  said  Rob. 
"Well,  anyhow,  in  one  month  they  had  sur- 
veyed and  staked  out  their  portage  trail  around 
the  big  falls,  had  cached  their  heavy  stores, 
had  built  new  boats,  had  killed  all  the  meat  they 
could  use,  and  had  proceeded  on.  They  now 
knew  that  they  were  almost  to  the  western 
edge  of  the  buffalo.  On  west,  as  I  expect 
Sacagawea  also  told  them,  they  might  have  to 
come  to  horse  meat  and  salmon.  That  didn't 
stop  our  fellows.  They  proceeded  on." 

"Time  they  did!"  said  Jesse. 

"Yes.  They  had  been  away  from  St.  Louis 
just  a  year  and  two  months,  when  they  left  the 
Falls,  here.  Let's  have  a  look  at  the  map." 

They  sat  down,  here  on  the  bank  of  the 
great  river,  on  the  edge  of  the  great  modern 
town,  in  sight  of  many  smelter  smokes,  and 
bent  over  the  old  maps  that  William  Clark 
had  made  with  such  marvelous  exactness  more 
than  a  hundred  years  ago. 

"She  seems  to  go  in  long  sweeps,  the  old 
Missouri,"  said  John,  pointing  with  his  finger. 

197 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"First  we  went  almost  west,  to  Kansas  City, 
Missouri.  Then  almost  north,  to  Sioux  City, 
Iowa.  Then  northwest  to  Pierre,  South 
Dakota,  and  then  north  to  Bismarck,  North 
Dakota.  Then  she  runs  strong  northwest  to 
the  Yellowstone,  and  then  straight  west  to 
here.  From  here  she  takes  one  more  big  angle, 
and  runs  almost  south  to  the  Three  Forks." 

"Look  it !"  pointed  Jesse.  "She  starts  below 
Forty,  at  St.  Louis,  and  goes  north  almost  to 
Forty-nine,  and  then  she  drops  down  again  to 
Forty-five  at  the  Three  Forks.  And  Lewis 
had  observations  on  latitude  and  longitude 
right  along.  Wonder  what  he  thought !" 

"He  did  a  great  deal  of  thinking,"  said  Rob. 
He  had  the  conviction  that  so  great  a  river 
must  run  deep  into  the  Rockies — he  insisted  on 
that.  Then  he  had  the  Indians  at  Mandan  to 
give  him  some  local  maps.  And  he  had  Sac- 
agawea,  worth  more  than  them  all  for  local 
advice  in  a  tight  place  where  no  one  else  had 
been  ahead.  It's  wonderful,  if  you  study  it, 
to  see  how  he  made  all  those  things  work  to- 
gether, and  how  he  used  his  brains  and  his 
reason  all  the  way  across.  Even  about  his  pet 
portable  boat,  he  didn't  sit  down  and  cry.  He 
did  the  next  thing." 

"And  proceeded  on !" 
198 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"And  proceeded  on,  yes." 

"Well,"  concluded  Jesse,  even  if  my  eagle 
and  my  island  are  gone,  I  suppose  I'll  have  to 
admit  that  this  place  is  the  real  portage.  They 
saw  the  Rockies  right  along  now.  They  threw 
those  canoes  into  the  high,  too !" 

"Tracking  and  poling,  pretty  soon  now,  and 
a  fine  daily  average,"  nodded  Rob.  "And  now 
I  don't  suppose  that  we  need  just  feel  that  we've 
funked  anything  by  not  sticking  to  our  boat 
all  the  time,  and  taking  a  pack  train  here ;  be- 
cause Clark  or  Lewis,  or  both  of  them,  and  a 
good  many  of  the  men,  walked  a  lot  of  the  time 
from  here,  hunting  and  scouting  and  figuring 
on  ahead." 

"That's  so !"  said  Jesse.  "Where  were  their 
horses  all  the  time?" 

"None  above  the  Mandans,"  said  Rob; 
"maybe  not  that  far.  They  started  with  two, 
and  picked  up  one,  and  one  died — that's  the 
record  up  to  the  Sioux.  But  beyond  the  Man- 
dans  they  hoofed  it,  or  poled  and  paddled  and 
pulled.  They  couldn't  sail  the  canoes — they 
gave  that  up.  And  now  both  their  perogues 
were  left  behind.  So  when  they  left  the  old 
eagle  on  his  broken  tree,  and  the  savage  white 
bears  all  along  here,  and  the  rattlesnakes  and 
everything  else  that  tried  to  stop  them  here, 

199 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

they  drew  their  belts  in  and  threw  her  in  the 
high — that's  right,  Jess." 

"And  speaking  of  the  portage,"  he  continued, 
"Uncle  Dick  told  me  to  get  a  wagon  and  fol- 
low down  as  close  as  we  could  to  our  camp 
and  get  our  stuff  all  up  to  a  place  above  the 
White  Bear  Islands,  and  go  into  camp  there 
until  he  came  in  with  Billy  Williams  and  the 
pack  horses,  from  his  ranch  on  the  Gallatin, 
near  the  Forks.  So  that's  a  day's  work,  even 
with  a  flivver — which  I  think  we'll  use  part 
way.  Time  we  set  out  and  proceeded  on, 
fellows." 

They  turned  away  from  the  Great  Falls  of 
the  ancient  river,  in  part  with  a  feeling  of 
sadness.  Jesse  waved  his  hand  toward  the 
Black  Eagle  Falls. 

"The  only  thing  is "  said  he. 

The  others  knew  Jesse  was  wishing  for  the 
wild  days  back  again. 


CHAPTER  XX 

READY  FOR  THE  RIVER  HEAD 

THE  young  explorers,  used  as  they  were  to 
outdoor  life,  had  no  difficulty  in  getting 
their  outfit  up  a  long  coulee  to  the  level  of  the 
prairie,  where  a  small  car  quickly  carried  them 
into  and  beyond  the  city  to  a  point  where  an- 
other gradual  descent  led  down  to  the  point 
usually  believed  to  be  that  where  the  "White 
Bear"  camp  of  Lewis  and  Clark  was  pitched 
above  the  falls.  Here  the  great  river  was 
wide  and  more  quiet,  as  though  making  ready 
for  its  great  plunges  below.  Not  far  from 
the  railway  tracks  they  put  up  their  temporary 
camp,  as  the  pack  horses  had  not  yet  arrived. 

"The  reader  will  suppose  one  hundred  years 
to  have  elapsed !"  said  Jesse,  sarcastically.  "All 
right ;  but  I  want  something  besides  fried  eggs 
and  marmalade." 

"Easy  now,  Jess/'  rejoined  his  older  friend. 
"Leave  that  to  Uncle  Dick.  He  told  me  he 
was  going  to  get  us  some  sport  within  ten 
days  from  here — fishing,  I  mean — trout,  and 
even  grayling.  Of  course,  at  this  season 

201 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

there'd  be  nothing  to  shoot.  Lewis  and  Clark 
killed  all  sorts  of  game  at  all  sorts  of  seasons, 
but  they  had  to  do  that  to  live.  They  had 
thirty-two  people  in  their  party,  all  working 
hard  and  eating  plenty.  They  would  eat  a 
whole  buffalo  every  day,  or  a  couple  of  elk, 
so  somebody  had  to  be  busy.  It  would  have 
taken  a  lot  of  fried  eggs  and  marmalade  to 
put  them  up  and  over  those  rapids.  But  as  you 
say,  we've  got  to  suppose  a  hundred  years  to 
have  elapsed,  so  we  don't  kill  a  buffalo  every 
day." 

"I  could  eat  half  of  one,  any  day !"  said  John. 
"I  get  awfully  hungry,  just  from  fighting  the 
mosquitoes." 

"I'll  bet  they  were  bad  enough.  The  old 
Journal  says  more  about  mosquitoes  than  any 
other  hardship.  Even  Gass  in  his  journal  tells 
how  bad  they  were  here  at  the  Great  Falls — I 
think  they  feared  them  more  than  they  did  the 
white  bears  or  the  rattlesnakes;  and  they  had 
plenty  of  them  all.  In  one  day  Lewis  was 
chased  into  the  river  by  a  grizzly,  charged  by 
three  buffalo  bulls,  and  nearly  bitten  by  a 
rattler!" 

"Must  have  been  a  busy  day!"  said  John. 

"Well,  I  expect  every  day  was  busy  for  them. 
For  instance,  when  they  got  to  this  camp  for 

202 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

the  upper  headquarters,  they  had  to  build  two 
more  canoes,  ten  miles  above  here.  That  made 
eight  in  all  for  the  thirty-two  people,  or  four 
to  a  canoe.  I  don't  think  they  ever  carried  that 
many  with  their  cargo;  and  they  had  quite  a 
lot  of  cargo,  even  then.  They  were  eating 
pork  on  the  Continental  Divide — their  last 
pork!" 

"No,"  said  Jesse,  "they  never  did  all  ride 
at  once.  First  one  captain  went  ahead  on  foot, 
then  the  other.  You  see,  they  got  into  moun- 
tain water  pretty  soon  now.  They  used  the 
tow  line  a  great  deal,  or  poled  the  boats  rather 
than  paddled.  Comes  to  getting  a  heavily 
loaded  boat  up  a  heavy  river,  you've  got  to  put 
on  the  power,  I'm  telling  you." 

"Yes,  sir,"  nodded  Rob.  "They  knew  they 
had  to  travel  now.  About  all  they  had  to  go 
on  was  the  girl  Sacagawea's  word  that  pretty 
soon  they'd  come  to  her  people. 

"So  they  set  out  from  here  on  July  15th, 
the  very  day  that  we  will,  if  we  get  off  to- 
morrow; only  it  took  them  one  year  more  to 
get  here  than  it  did  us.  And  two  men  were  in 
each  canoe — not  enough  to  drive  her,  they 
found.  And  Lewis  and  the  girl  walked  on  this 
side  the  river,  and  after  a  while  Clark  walked 
on  the  other  side — all  on  foot,  of  course.  He 
14  203 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

had  Fields  and  Potts  and  his  servant  York  with 
him — all  alone  in  the  Indian  country,  of  which 
not  one  of  them  knew  a  foot. 

"And  now/'  went  on  Rob,  "they  were  once 
more  against  that  same  old  very  risky  proposi- 
tion of  a  divided  party,  part  in  boats  and  part 
on  shore.  I  tell  you,  and  we  ought  to  know 
it,  from  our  own  experiences  up  North,  that 
that's  the  easiest  way  to  get  into  trouble  that 
any  wilderness  travelers  could  think  up.  They 
simply  had  marvelous  luck.  For  instance, 
after  Clark  left  them  above  here,  on  July  18th, 
he  never  saw  them  oftener  than  once  a  day 
again  until  July  22d,  and  that  was  away  up 
at  the  head  of  the  big  Canon. 

"To  the  Three  Forks  was  two  hundred  and 
fifty-two  and  one-half  miles,  as  Clark  called 
it,  though  engineers  now  say  it  is  only  two 
hundred  and  ten  miles.  He  walked  clean 
around  the  big  canon  of  the  Missouri  at  the 
Gate  of  the  Mountains — below  Helena,  that  is 
— and  never  saw  it  at  all !  Now  if  you  say  he 
walked  the  whole  ten  days  from  the  head  of 
the  falls  to  the  Forks,  and  say  it  was  only  two 
hundred  and  ten  miles  and  not  over  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty,  that's  over  twenty  miles  a  day, 
on  foot,  in  the  mountains,  under  pack  and  a 
heavy  rifle,  in  moccasins,  and  over  prickly- 

204 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

pear  country  that  got  their  feet  full  of  thorns. 
Clark  pulled  out  seventeen  spines,  broken  off 
in  his  feet,  one  day  when  he  stopped. 

"Now  that  takes  good  men  to  do  that.  Not 
many  sportsmen  of  to-day  could  do  it,  I  know 
that.  And  yet,  after  four  days'  absence  spent 
in  this  wild  country  where  they  were  the  first 
white  men,  they  met  again  at  the  head  of  the 
Canon  below  the  Forks,  just  as  easy  and  as 
natural  as  if  they  had  telephoned  to  each  other 
every  day!  I  call  that  exploring!  I  call  those 
chaps  great  men !" 

"Reader  will  suppose  one  hundred  years  to 
have  elapsed,"  drawled  Jesse,  again.  "I'd 
telephone  Uncle  Dick  now,  if  I  knew  where 
he  was." 

"Leave  him  alone,"  said  John.  "I  give  him 
till  to-morrow.  It  was  only  a  week  ago  he 
got  word  through  to  Billy  Williams,  in  the 
Three  Forks  Valley,  to  come  on  with  his 
horses." 

"Well,"  said  Jesse,  "if  I'm  not  to  have  half 
a  buffalo  to-night,  and  if  Cruzatte,  the  bow 
man,  isn't  here  to  play  a  jig  for  us,  I'll  see 
what  I  can  do  about  some  fried  eggs  and 
marmalade." 

"And  I'll  like  to  get  a  leg  over  leather  once 
more,"  said  John.  "I'm  looking  for  horses 

205 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

now,  same  as  Lewis  and  Clark  did  along  in 
here  for  a  few  weeks/' 

The  young  travelers  did  not  have  so  long  to 
wait  as  they  had  feared.  That  very  night, 
as  they  sat  about  their  fire  on  their  bed  rolls, 
talking  of  their  many  trips  together,  they  heard 
in  the  darkness  not  far  away  the  tremulous 
note  of  a  screech  owl,  repeated  again  a  moment 
later.  Jesse  stopped  talking,  turning  his  head. 
Rob  laughed:  "That's  Uncle  Dick  now!"  he 
said,  in  a  low  tone ;  and  answered  with  an  owl 
call  just  like  the  one  they  had  heard.  They 
heard  a  laugh  in  the  dark,  and  from  behind 
the  tent  stepped  Uncle  Dick. 

"How!"  said  he. 

"How !"  said  each  of  the  boys  gravely.  Rob 
made  the  Indian  sign  of  "sit  down" — his  fist 
struck  down  on  the  robe  that  was  spread  by  the 
little  fire. 

Their  companion  sat  down,  not  saying  a 
word.  Pretty  soon  he  began  to  talk  in  "sign 
talk,"  the  boys  all  watching  closely. 

"Me.  Gone.  Two  sleeps.  I  come  here, 
now,  me.  Sun  comes  up.  We  go.  We.  Cross 
water.  Horse — four.  Ah!  Two " 

Uncle  Dick  broke  out  laughing.  John  shook 
his  fingers,  loosely,  to  say,  "What's  that?" 

"That's  what  I  don't  know!"  Uncle  Dick 
206 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

said,  laughing  again.  "I  don't  know  what  the 
sign  is  for  'mule/  It  isn't  elk,  or  deer,  or  wolf, 
or  buffalo.  Oh,  of  course,  split  fingers  over 
another  finger — that  means  'Ride  horse.'  But 
that  does  not  mean  'mule' !  And  if  I  put  on 
ears,  how'd  you  know  I  didn't  mean  'deer  with- 
big-ears/  or  'mule  deer/  and  not  'mule'  ?  The 
Indians  had  mule  deer,  but  they  didn't  have 
mules!" 

"Yes,  they  did!"  said  Jesse.  "The  Journal 
says  they  bought  one  mule  of  the  Shoshonis, 
away  west  of  here !" 

"Does  it?  I'd  forgotten.  Well,  I'd  like  to 
know  where  those  people  got  that  mule  out 
here,  in  1805!  I'd  have  been  no  more  sur- 
prised to  see  a  mastodon  really  walking  around 
out  here.  Of  course,  you  know  that  President 
Jefferson  wrote  Lewis  not  to  be  surprised  if  he 
did  see  the  mastodon  still  living  in  this  un- 
known country.  You  see,  all  of  them  knew 
about  the  mastodon  bones  found  in  the  Big 
Lick,  Kentucky.  They  didn't  know  a  thing 
about  this  new  world  we'd  just  bought  of 
Napoleon,  mastodons,  mules,  and  all. 

"Well,  anyhow,  Billy  Williams  has  his  camp 
five  or  six  miles  from  here,  across,  and  he  has 
four  saddle  broncs  and  two  perfectly  good 
mules  for  the  packs — one  plumb  black  and  one 

207 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

plumb  white — both  ex-army  mules  and  I  sup- 
pose fifty  years  or  so  old.  I  think  old  Sleepy, 
the  white  one,  is  the  wisest  animal  I  ever  saw 
on  four  legs — I've  been  out  with  Sleepy  before, 
and  with  Billy,  too.  Good  outfit,  boys — small, 
no  frills,  all  we  need  and  nothing  we  don't. 

"I've  left  our  outboard  motors  here  in  town 
with  a  friend.  Most  wish  we  hadn't  brought 
them  around.  But  we'll  see  how  much  time 
we  have  when  we  get  done  projecting  around 
at  the  head  of  the  river. 

"I  can  promise  you  some  knotty  problems  up 
in  there.  To  me,  what's  ahead  of  us  in  the 
next  two  weeks  was  the  most  exciting  part  of 
the  whole  Lewis  and  Clark  trip  across." 

"But,  Uncle  Dick,  you  promised  us  some 
sport — fishing,  I  mean — trout  and  grayling." 

"Jesse,"  said  his  uncle,  "yes,  I  did.  And  be- 
ing a  good  Indian  myself,  I'm  going  to  keep 
my  word  to  the  paleface.  We'll  take  a  week 
off  with  Billy's  flivver,  if  Billy's  mules  con- 
nect with  the  flivver ;  and  I'll  promise  you,  even 
now,  hard  hit  as  every  trout  water  is  all  through 
here,  the  finest  trout  fishing — and  the  only 
grayling  fishing — there  is  left  in  all  America. 
How  does  that  strike  you?" 

"Good !  Where's  it  going  to  be?"  demanded 
Jesse. 

208 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"Never  you  mind.  That's  a  secret  just  yet. 
Billy  knows." 

"And  we  don't  have  to  suppose  a  hundred 
years  have  elapsed?" 

"No!  Now  turn  in,  fellows,  or  Billy'll  think 
we're  lazy  in  the  morning." 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE  PACK  TRAIN 

BEFORE  sunup  Rob  had  the  camp  fire  go- 
ing, while  Jesse  brought  in  water  and  wood 
and  John  bent  over  his  cooking.  Uncle  Dick 
walked  up  the  river  to  where  he  had  landed 
his  boat  the  evening  previous,  and  dropped 
down  closer  to  the  camp.  The  day  still  was 
young  when  the  tent  was  struck  and  every- 
thing packed  aboard  the  boat,  which  presently 
landed  them  on  the  farther  shore,  ready  for 
the  next  lap  of  their  journey  and  the  new 
transportation  that  was  now  in  order. 

They  were  met  by  their  new  companion,  the 
young  rancher,  Billy  Williams,  who  had  struck 
his  own  camp  and  brought  the  animals  down 
to  meet  them.  They  found  him  a  quiet,  pleas- 
ant-spoken young  man  of  perhaps  thirty,  lean 
and  hardy,  dressed  much  like  a  farmer  except 
that  he  wore  a  pair  of  well-worn,  plain,  calf- 
skin chaps  to  protect  his  legs  in  riding — some- 
thing in  which  the  boys  could  not  imitate  him, 
for  they  were  cut  down  to  their  Scout  uni- 
forms ;  which,  however,  did  very  well. 

210 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

They  shook  hands  all  around,  the  young 
rancher  quietly  estimating  his  young  charges, 
and  they  in  turn  making  up  their  opinions 
regarding  him,  which,  needless  to  say,  were 
not  unfavorable,  for  none  quicker  than  they 
to  know  a  good  outdoor  man  when  they  saw 
him. 

"So  this  is  old  Sleepy?"  said  Jesse,  going  up 
to  the  sleek  big  white  mule  that  stood  with 
drooping  head,  the  stalk  of  a  thistle  hanging 
out  of  a  corner  of  his  mouth.  "He's  fat  and 
strong,  isn't  he?  What  makes  him  look  so 
sad?  And  aren't  you  afraid  he'll  run  away? 
He  hasn't  even  a  halter  on  him." 

"No,  he  won't  run  away,"  replied  Billy. 
"You  couldn't  drive  him  away  from  the  packs. 
He  always  comes  up  every  morning  to  be 
packed,  and  he  always  stands  around  like  he 
was  going  to  die — but  he  isn't.  Sleepy'll  live 
another  hundred  years,  anyhow. 

"I  never  hobble  or  tie  or  picket  Sleepy  at 
night;  he  sticks  close  to  old  Fox.  That's  my 
horse,  the  red  one.  You'd  think  Fox  was  going 
to  die,  too,  but  he  isn't.  He  used  to  be  a  cow 
horse;  and  a  mean  one,  too,  they  say;  but  all 
at  once  he  reformed  and  since  then  he's  led  a 
Christian  life,  same  as  Sleepy. 

"About  that  thistle.    Sleepy  is  very  fond  of 

211 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

thistles — he'll  stop  the  whole  train  to  eat  one. 
Usually  he  carries  one  hanging  in  his  mouth, 
so's  to  eat  it  when  he  gets  hungry.  He's  a 
wise  one,  that  mule.  I'll  bet  you,  an  hour  be- 
fore camp  to-night  you'll  see  him  wake  up  and 
get  frisky;  all  his  tired  look  is  just  a  bluff. 
And  I'll  bet  you,  too,  you  can't  manage  to  ride 
ahead  of  Sleepy  on  the  trail.  He  never  will 
take  the  last  place  on  the  trail." 

"Why,  how's  that?"  said  Jesse.  "I  should 
think  he'd  like  to  loaf  behind,  if  he's  so  wise." 

"No,  Sleepy  has  got  brains.  He  knows  that 
if  he  gets  a  stone  in  his  foot,  or  if  his  pack 
slips,  a  man  is  his  best  friend.  So  he  just 
goes  ahead  where  folks  can  see  that  he's  com- 
fortable. You  can't  ride  ahead  of  him;  he'll 
gallop  on  and  won't  let  you  pass  him ;  so  don't 
try. 

"Nigger,  that  other  mule,  doesn't  care — 
some  one'll  have  to  keep  him  moving.  I  usually 
carry  a  little  rubber  sling  shot  in  my  pocket, 
and  when  Nigger  gets  too  lazy  and  begins  to 
straggle  off  I  turn  around  and  peck  him  one 
with  a  pebble.  Then  you  ought  to  see  him  get 
into  his  place  and  promise  to  be  good ! 

"Fve  got  quite  a  pack  train,  at  home  on  the 
Gallatin,  but  your  uncle  said  this  was  all  I  was 
to  bring.  Can  we  take  all  your  stuff?" 

212 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

Uncle  Dick  smiled  at  that  and  showed  him 
the  four  rolls,  neat  and  compact.  "The  robes 
make  most  of  the  bulk,"  said  he. 

"Yes.  Well,  I  hope  they  can  keep  warm  in 
July,"  said  Billy. 

"But  we  like  'em,"  said  Jesse.  "It's  more 
like  the  old  times." 

"Yes.  Well,  I  hope  you've  got  some  mos- 
quito bar.  We've  still  got  a  few  old-time  mos- 
quitoes in  the  valley;  but  in  a  week  or  two  now 
they'll  all  be  gone." 

"Trust  these  boys  to  have  what  they  need, 
and  no  more,"  said  Uncle  Dick.  "Now  fall  to 
and  get  on  the  loads  while  I  take  back  my 
borrowed  skiff." 

Billy  looked  at  the  boys  dubiously.  "Well, 
I'll  make  it  the  lone  packer'  hitch,"  said  he. 

"Oh,  they'll  help  you,"  said  Uncle  Dick. 
"They  can  throw  almost  any  diamond,  from 
the  'government'  hitch  down  to  the  'squaw' 
hitch.  You  see,  we've  lived  up  North  a  good 
deal,  and  learned  to  pack  anything — man,  dog, 
or  mule." 

"So?  Well,  all  right."  He  turned  to  Rob. 
"Better  take  off  side,"  he  said ;  "the  mules  are 
more  used  to  me  for  near  side.  I  never  blind- 
fold them." 

They  began  with  Sleepy,  and  soon  had  two 
213 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

packs  in  the  sling  ropes,  a  third  on  top,  with 
all  ready  to  lash.  Rob  asked  no  questions,  but 
went  on,  taking  slack  and  cinching  at  the  word. 
Billy  laughed. 

"Tried  you  on  the  old  U.  S.  hitch,"  said  he. 
"None  better.  Set?" 

"All  set !" 

"Cinch !"  Rob  put  his  foot  against  Sleepy's 
far  side  and  drew  hard.  In  a  jiffy  the  ropes 
flew  into  the  tight  diamond  and  Billy  tied  off. 
"She's  a  good  one!"  intoned  Rob.  Billy 
laughed  again. 

"I  guess  youVe  been  there  before,"  said  he. 

"How  about  you  boys — can  you  all  ride? 
My  saddle  stock's  all  quiet,  far  as  I  know, 
but " 

"I  think  we  can  get  by,"  said  Rob.  "We're 
not  fancy,  but  we  can  ride  all  day." 

"Well,  you  try  out  the  lengths  of  the  stirrup 
leathers  for  yourselves,  and  I'll  lace  them  for 
you.  First  let's  get  your  loose  stuff  in  the 
panniers  on  Nigger — I  brought  along  one  pair 
of  kyacks,  for  it's  easier  to  carry  the  cooking 
stuff  and  the  loose  grub  that  way  than  it  is  to 
make  up  packs  in  the  mantas  every  day. 

John,  who  was  cook  for  that  week,  now  be- 
gan to  open  and  rearrange  his  kitchen  pack; 
and  Rob  was  standing  off  side,  ready  to  handle 

214 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

the  lash  rope,  when  all  at  once  they  heard  a 
snort  and  the  trampling  of  hoofs. 

They  turned,  to  see  Jesse  just  manage  to  get 
his  seat  on  one  of  the  horses,  which  plunged 
away,  his  head  down,  bucking  like  a  good  fel- 
low. For  a  moment  or  so  Jesse  hung  on,  but 
before  anyone  could  mount  and  help  him  he  was 
flung  full  length,  and  lay,  his  arms  out,  motion- 
less. It  all  happened  in  a  flash. 

They  ran  to  him.  At  once  Rob  dragged  him 
up,  sitting,  in  front  of  him,  and  dragged  his 
shoulders  back,  pressing  his  own  knee  up  and 
down  the  boy's  spine.  He  saw  that  no  bones 
were  broken,  and  was  using  some  revival  meth- 
ods he  had  learned  on  the  football  field. 

"Ouch!  Leggo!"  said  Jesse,  after  a  little. 
' What's  the  matter?" 

Rob  let  him  up.  He  staggered  around  in  a 
circle  two  or  three  times,  dazed.  "Gee !"  said 
he,  laughing  at  last.  "Where'd  I  drop  from?" 
Then  they  all  laughed,  very  gladly,  seeing  he 
had  only  been  stunned  by  the  fall. 

"All  right,  son?"  asked  Billy,  coming  to  him 
anxiously.  "I'm  sorry !  I  didn't  know " 

"My  fault,  sir,"  said  Jesse,  stoutly.  "I  ad- 
mit it.  I  ought  to  have  known  more  than  to 
mount  any  Western  horse  from  the  right  side 
and  not  the  left.  My  fault.  But,  you  see,  I 

215 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

had  the  laces  loose  on  the  stirrup,  so  I  just 
thought  I'd  climb  up  on  the  other  side  and 
try  the  length  there." 

"You're  right — that's  not  safe,"  said  Billy. 
"I  never  knew  that  cay  use  to  act  bad  before. 
Are  you  afraid  of  him  now?" 

"Naw!"  said  Jesse,  scoffing.  "Bring  him 
over — only  fasten  that  leg  leather.  I'll  ride 
him." 

"Better  let  me  top  him  off  first." 

"No,  sir!  He's  in  my  string  and  I'll  ride 
him  alone!" 

Billy  allowed  him  to  try,  since  he  saw  that 
the  horse  was  now  over  his  fright,  but  he 
mounted  his  own  horse  first  and  rode  along- 
side, after  he  had  the  stirrup  fixed.  To  the 
surprise  of  all,  the  horse  now  was  gentle  as  a 
lamb,  and  Jesse  kicked  him  in  the  side  to  make 
him  go. 

"Horse  is  a  funny  thing,"  said  Billy.  "He 
ain't  got  any  real  brains,  like  a  mule.  He  gets 
scared  at  anything  he  ain't  used  to,  and  he 
can't  reason  any.  Now  look  at  Sleepy !" 

That  animal  did  not  even  turn  his  head,  but 
stood  under  his  pack  with  eyes  closed,  taking 
no  interest  in  their  little  matters. 

They  had  all  the  saddles  ready  and  the  last 
rope  cinched  by  the  time  Uncle  Dick  returned. 

216 


BEFORE  ANYONE  COULD    HELP    HIM    HE   WAS   FLUNG  FULL  LENGTH, 
AND   LAY    MOTIONLESS 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

He  rebuked  Jesse  for  a  "tenderfoot  play"  when 
they  told  him  what  had  happened,  much  an- 
noyed. "I'm  responsible  for  you,"  said  he, 
"and  while  I'm  willing  you  each  should  take 
all  fair  chances  like  a  man,  I'll  not  have  any 
needless  risks.  Learn  to  do  things  right,  in 
the  field,  and  then  do  them  that  way  always. 
You  know  better  than  to  mount  a  horse  on  the 
off  side.  That's  an  Indian  trick,  but  you're 
not  an  Indian  and  this  isn't  an  Indian  horse." 

Jesse  was  much  crestfallen  for  being  thrown 
and  then  scolded  for  it. 

"Is  he  hurt  any?"  asked  Uncle  Dick  of  Rob, 
aside. 

Rob  shook  his  head.  "I  don't  think  so.  Just 
knocked  the  wind  out  of  him.  He  was  lying 
with  his  eyes  wide  open.  He's  all  right." 

"On  our  way !"  exclaimed  Uncle  Dick.  They 
all  swung  into  saddle  now,  Billy  leading,  old 
Sleepy  next  to  Fox,  the  place  he  always 
claimed;  then  Uncle  Dick,  Jesse,  John,  and 
Rob,  Nigger  coming  last,  poking  along  behind, 
his  ears  lopping.  In  a  few  moments  they  all 
were  shaken  into  .place  in  the  train,  and  all 
went  on  as  usual,  the  gait  being  a  walk,  only 
once  in  a  while  an  easy  trot. 

"We  set  out  and  proceeded  on  under  a  gentle 
breeze,"  quoted  John. 

217 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"Reader  will  suppose  one  hundred  years  to 
have  elapsed,"  began  Jesse,  trying  to  be  funny. 

"Jess/'  said  his  uncle  at  that,  "rather  you'd 
not  poke  fun  at  the  Journal,  or  at  our  trip.  I 
want  you  to  take  it  seriously  and  to  feel  it's 
worth  while." 

"I'm  sorry,  sir,"  said  Jesse,  presently,  who 
was  rather  feeling  disgraced  that  morning.  "I 
won't,  any  more.  I'm  glad  we've  got  horses." 

"Now  I  want  you  to  remember  that  when 
Captain  Clark  and  his  three  men  came  in  here, 
on  foot,  they  found  an  old  Indian  road,  marked 
plain  by  the  lodge  poles.  They  went  up  Little 
Prickly  Pear  Creek,  over  the  ridge  and  down 
the  Big  Pear  Creek. 

"You  see,  Clark  was  hunting  Indians.  He 
wanted  horses ;  because  he  could  see,  even  if  the 
Indian  girl  had  not  told  him,  that  before  long 
they  must  run  their  river  to  its  head,  and  then, 
if  they  couldn't  get  horses,  their  expedition 
was  over  for  keeps.  They  all  were  anxious 
now. 

"Billy,  all  I  have  to  say  about  the  road  is 
that  we'll  make  long  days;  and  we'll  keep  off 
the  main  motor  roads  all  the  way  when  we 
get  toward  Marysville  and  Helena,  over  east 
and  south— no  towns  if  we  can  help  it.  It's 
going  to  be  hard  to  dodge  them." 

218 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"Pretty  hard  to  help  it,  that's  no  lie,"  said 
Billy.  "This  country's  all  settled  now.  They 
been  running  a  steamer  up  and  down  the  Canon 
above  the  Gate  of  the  Mountains.  You  folks 
going  to  take  that  trip?  Want  to  see  the  big 
dam  at  the  head,  at  the  old  ferry?" 

Uncle  Dick  turned  in  his  saddle,  to  see  what 
the  boys  would  say.  John  made  bold  to  answer. 

"Well,  I  don't  know  how  the  other  fellows 
feel,"  said  he.  "Of  course,  we  know  the  Gate 
is  a  wonderful  spot,  where  the  two  ranges 
pinch  in ;  and  the  five  miles  above,  they  all  say, 
is  one  of  the  greatest  canons  in  America — 
river  deep,  banks  a  thousand,  fifteen  hundred 
feet 

"Sure  fine !"  nodded  Billy,  who  had  dropped 
back  alongside. 

"Yes,  but  you  see,  we've  been  in  all  sorts 
of  canons  and  things,  pretty  much,  first.  Now, 
way  it  seems  to  me  is,  anybody  can  go,  if  it's 
a  steamboat  trip.  And  if  there's  dams,  she 
isn't  so  wild  any  more.  We'd  rather  put  in 
our  time  wilder,  I  believe." 

The  others  thought  so,  too.  "Besides,  we're 
following  Clark  now,"  said  Rob,  "and  he  never 
saw  the  Gate  at  all,  famous  as  it  got  to  be 
after  Lewis  described  it.  Lewis  went  wild 
over  it." 

15  219 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"Let's  sidestep  everything  and  get  up  to  the 
Forks,"  voted  John.  "I  didn't  know  this  river 
was  so  long.  We've  got  to  hustle." 

"I've  got  another  book,"  said  Uncle  Dick, 
slapping  his  coat  pocket.  "It  covers  the  trail 
later  on — 1904.  To-night  in  camp,  I'll  show 
you  something  that  it  says  about  this  country 
in  here  at  the  head  of  the  Missouri  River. 

"You  maybe  didn't  know  that  Helena,  on 
below  us,  used  to  be  Last  Chance  Gulch,  where 
they  panned  $40,000,000  of  gold— and  had  a 
Hangman's  Tree  until  not  so  very  long  ago, 
where  they  used  to  hang  desperadoes. 

"And  off  to  Clark's  right,  when  he  topped 
the  Ordway  Creek  divide,  was  where  Marys- 
ville  is  now.  They  only  took  $20,000,000  out 
of  one  mine,  over  there !  And  so  on.  Wait  till 
to-night,  and  I'll  let  you  read  something  about 
the  great  gold  mines  and  other  mines  in  this 
book.1  I  told  you  the  Missouri  River  leads  you 
into  the  heart  of  the  wildest  and  most  romantic 
history  of  America,  though  much  of  it  is  slip- 
ping out  of  mind  to-day." 

And  that  night,  indeed  around  their  first 
pack  train  camp  fire,  with  the  light  of  a  candle 
stuck  in  a  little  heap  of  sand  on  top  a  box, 
he  did  read  to  an  audience  who  sat  with  start- 

*The   Trail  of  Lewis  and  Clark;   Olin  D.  Wheeler,   1904. 
220 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

ing  eyes,  listening  to  the  talks  of  gold  which 
were  new  to  them. 

"Listen  here,  boys,"  he  said,  after  they  had 
traced  out  the  course  of  the  day  and  made  the 
field  notes  which  served  them  as  their  daily 
journals.  "Here's  what  it  says  about  the  very 
country  we're  in  right  now : 

"Gold  was  discovered  in  Montana  in  1852  and  the 
principal  mining  camps  of  the  early  days  were,  in  the 
orders  of  discovery  and  succession,  Grasshopper  Gulch 
— Bannack— 1862 ;  Alder  Gulch— Virginia  City— 1863 ; 
Last  Chance  Gulch — Helena — 1864;  Confederate  Gulch 
— Diamond  City — 1865.  Smaller  placers  were  being 
worked  on  large  numbers  of  streams,  many  of  them 
very  rich,  but  the  four  here  named  were  those  which 
achieved  national  renown  from  the  vast  wealth  they 
produced  and  from  various  incidents  connected  with 
their  rise  and  fall.  In  1876  there  were  five  hundred 
gold-bearing  gulches  in  Montana.  .  .  . 

"The  California  gold  wave  reached  its  zenith  in 
1853.  What  more  natural  than  that  the  army  of  miners, 
with  the  decadence  of  the  California  fields,  should 
search  out  virgin  ground  ?  .  .  . 

"When  Captain  Clark  crossed  the  divide  between 
Ordway's  and  Pryor's  Creeks  he  had  at  his  right  hand 
the  spurs  of  the  Rockies  about  Marysville,  where  one 
mine  was  afterward  to  be  located  from  which  more 
than  $20,000,000  of  gold  was  to  be  taken.  As  he  pro- 
ceeded across  the  prickly-pear  plains  toward  the  Mis- 
souri, he  came  in  sight  of  the  future  Last  Chance 
Gulch,  whereon  Helena,  the  capital  of  the  state,  is 
located,  and  from  whose  auriferous  gravels  the  world 
was  to  be  enriched  to  the  amount  of  $40,000,000  more. 

221 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"From  the  gravel  bars  along  the  Missouri  and  its 
tributaries  gold  dust  and  nuggets  running  into  millions 
of  dollars  have  been  taken,  and  the  total  production 
from  placer  mining  through  Montana,  including  hy- 
draulic mining,  from  1862  to  1900  was,  probably,  not 
far  from  $150,000,000,  the  total  gold  production  from 
the  state  being  reckoned  at  about  $250,000,000. 

"On  July  23d  the  narrative  mentions  a  Creek  '20 
yards  wide'  which  they  called  Whitehouse's  Creek, 
after  one  of  their  men.  This  stream  was  either  Con- 
federate or  Duck  Creek.  The  two  flow  into  the  Mis- 
souri near  together — the  U.  S.  Land  Office  map  com- 
bines them  into  one  creek.  If  Confederate  Creek — 
this  was  the  stream  above  the  mouth,  in  the  heart  of 
the  Belt  Mountains. 

"This  gulch  is  said  to  have  been  discovered  by  Con- 
federate soldiers  of  Price's  army,  who,  in  1861-62, 
after  the  battles  of  Lexington,  Pea  Ridge,  etc.,  in  Mis- 
souri, made  their  way  to  Montana  via  the  Missouri 
River  and  Fort  Benton.  On  their  way  to  Last  Chance 
Gulch  they  found  'color*  near  the  mouth  of  this  creek. 
Following  up  the  stream,  they  found  the  pay  dirt  grow- 
ing richer,  and  they  established  themselves  in  the  gulch, 
naming  it  Confederate;  and  within  a  short  time  Dia- 
mond City,  the  town  of  the  gulch,  was  the  center  of  a 
population  of  5,000  souls. 

"Confederate  Gulch  was  in  many  respects  the  most 
phenomenal  of  all  the  Montana  gulches.  The  ground 
was  so  rich  that  as  high  as  $180  in  gold  was  taken 
from  one  pan  of  dirt ;  and  from  a  plat  of  ground  four 
feet  by  ten  feet,  between  drift  timbers,  $1,100  worth 
of  gold  was  extracted  in  twenty- four  hours.  At  the 
junction  of  Montana  Gulch — a  side  gulch — with  Con- 
federate, the  ground  was  very  rich,  the  output  at  that 
point  being  estimated  at  $2,000,000. 

"Montana  Bar,  which  lies  some  distance  up  the  gulch 
222 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

and  at  considerable  of  an  elevation  above  it,  was  found 
in  the  latter  part  of  1865  to  be  marvelously  rich.  There 
were  about  two  acres  in  reality,  that  were  here  sluiced 
over,  but  the  place  is  spoken  of  as  'the  richest  acre  of 
gold-bearing  ground  ever  discovered  in  the  world/  I 
quote  A.  M.  Williams,  who  has  made  a  special  study  of 
these  old  gulches : 

'  'The  flumes  on  this  bar,  on  cleaning  up,  were  found 
to  be  burdened  with  gold  by  the  hundredweight,  and 
the  enormous  yield  of  $180  to  the  pan  in  Confederate 
and  Montana  Gulches  was  forgotten  in  astonishment, 
and  a  wild  delirium  of  joy  at  the  wonderful  yield  of 
over  a  hundred  thousand  dollars  to  the  pan  of  gravel 
taken  from  the  bedrock  of  Montana  bar/ 

"From  this  bar  seven  panfuls  of  clean  gold  were 
taken  out  at  one  'clean-up,'  that  weighed  700  pounds 
and  were  worth  $114,800.  A  million  and  a  half  dollars 
in  gold  was  hauled  by  wagon  from  Diamond  City  to 
Fort  Benton  at  one  time  for  shipment  to  the  East. 
This  gulch  is  reputed  to  have  produced  $10,000,000, 
from  1864  to  1868,  and  it  is  still  being  sluiced. 

"Some  very  large  gold  nuggets  were  found  in  this 
region.  Many  were  worth  from  $100  to  $600  or  $700. 
Several  were  worth  from  $1,500  to  $1,800;  one,  of 
pure  gold,  was  worth  $2,100  and  two  or  three  exceeded 
$3,000  in  value." 

The  boys  sat  silent,  hardly  able  to  under- 
stand what  they  had  heard.  Billy  Williams 
nodded  his  head  gravely. 

"It's  all  true/'  said  he.  "When  I  was  a  boy 
I  heard  my  father  tell  of  it.  He  was  in  on  the 
Confederate  Creek  strike.  He  helped  sluice 
five  thousand  dollars  in  one  day,  and  they  didn't 

223 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

half  work.  He  said  it  was  just  laying  there 
plumb  yellow.  They  thought  it  would  last 
always;  but  it  didn't. 

"You  see,  I  was  born  out  here.  My  dad  was 
rich  in  the  'sixties,  then  he  went  broke,  like 
everybody.  When  he  got  old  he  married  and 
settled.  He  took  to  ranching  and  hunting,  and 
I've  taken  to  ranching.  Times  are  quieter  now. 
They  weren't  always  quiet,  along  this  little  old 
creek,  believe  me !" 

"Gee!"  said  Jesse,  rubbing  his  head,  which 
had  a  bump  on  it,  "I'd  like  to  pan  some  gold !" 

"I  expect  you  could,"  said  Billy.  "Might 
get  the  color,  even  now,  on  the  Jefferson  bars, 
I  don't  know.  Of  course,  they've  learned  how 
to  work  the  low-grade  dirt  now — cyanide  and 
dredges  and  all.  It's  a  business  now ! 

"Yes,  and  when  we  get  along  a  day  or  so 
farther,  beyond  the  Forks,  I'll  locate  a  few  more 
spots  that  got  to  be  famous  for  reasons  that 
Lewis  and  Clark  never  dreamed.  From  the 
head  of  the  Canon  up  the  beaver  swarmed ;  this 
was  the  best  beaver  water  in  America,  and 
known  as  such.  That  was  the  wealth  those 
boatmen  understood.  No  wonder  Lewis 
thought  it  would  be  a  good  place  for  a  fort. 
And  the  traders  did  build  a  fur  post  at  the 
Forks,  in  1808.  And  the  Blackf  eet  came.  And 

224 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

they  killed  poor  old  Drewyer  and  a  lot  of  others 
of  the  fur  traders.  Oh,  this  was  the  dark  and 
bloody  Blackfeet  ground,  all  right." 

"Tell  us  about  it,  Uncle  Dick!"  Jesse  was 
eager. 

"Wait,  son.  We  are  still  on  foot  with  Clark, 
you  know,  and  we  don't  know  where  the  boats 
are,  and  we  haven't  found  any  Shoshonis  and 
we've  not  too  much  to  eat.  Wait  a  day  or  so. 
We've  only  done  about  twenty-five  miles,  and 
that's  a  big  day  for  the  packs — not  a  much 
faster  rate  than  Clark  was  marching.  He 
nearly  wore  out  himself  and  his  men,  on  that 
march.  I  fancy  not  even  York,  his  cheerful 
colored  man,  came  in  that  night  as  frisky  as 
old  Sleepy." 

"That's  right,"  said  John.  "It  was  just  as 
Mr.  Williams  said — he  freshened  up  and  came 
in  .playing,  kicked  up  his  heels  when  his  load 
was  off,  and  bit  me  on  the  arm  and  kicked  old 
Nigger.  And  there  he  is  now,  with  another 
thistle  saved  up !" 


s 


CHAPTER  XXII 

AT  THE  THREE  FORKS 

OMETHING  of  the  feverish  haste  which 
had  driven  Capt.  William  Clark,  when, 
weary  and  sore-footed,  he  and  his  little  party 
has  crowded  on  up  along  the  great  bend  of  the 
Missouri  and  into  the  vast  southerly  dip  of 
the  Continental  Divide,  now  animated  the  mem- 
bers of  the  little  pack  train,  which  followed  as 
nearly  as  they  could  tell  the  "old  Indian  road" 
which  Clark  had  followed.  They  felt  that  they 
at  least  must  equal  his  average  daily  distance 
of  twenty-one  miles. 

Keeping  back  from  the  towns  all  they  could, 
though  often  in  sight  or  hearing  of  the  rail- 
way, they  passed  above  the  Gate  of  the  Moun- 
tains and  the  Bear  Tooth  Rock,  and  skirted 
the  flanks  of  the  Belt  range,  which  forked  out 
on  each  side  of  the  lower  end  of  that  great 
valley  in  which  Nature  for  so  long  had  con- 
cealed her  secrets  of  the  great  and  mysterious 
river. 

A  feeling  almost  of  awe  came  over  them 
all  as  they  endeavored  to  check  up  their  own 

226 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

advance  with  the  records  of  these  others  who 
had  been  the  first  white  men  to  enter  that 
marvelous  land  which  ought  to  be  called  the 
Heart  of  America,  hidden  as  it  is,  having 
countless  arteries  and  veins,  and  pulsing  as 
it  is  even  now  with  mysterious  and  unfail- 
ing power — the  most  fascinating  spot  in  all 
America. 

"Here  they  passed !"  Uncle  Dick  would  say. 
"Sometimes  Clark  met  them,  or  hung  up  a 
deer  on  the  bank  for  them.  Always  in  the 
boats,  or  on  shore  when  she  was  walking,  the 
Indian  girl  would  say  that  soon  they  would 
come  to  the  Three  Rivers,  where  years  ago  she 
had  been  captured  by  the  Minnetarees,  from 
the  far-off  Mandan  country.  'Bimeby,  my 
people!'  I  suppose  she  said.  But  for  weeks 
they  did  not  find  her  people." 

"Was  Clark  on  his  Indian  road'  all  -the 
time?"  asked  Rob. 

"He  must  have  been  a  good  deal  of  the 
time,  or  rather  on  two  branches  of  it.  That's 
natural.  You  see,  this  was  on  the  road  to  the 
Great  Falls,  and  the  Shoshonis,  Flatheads,  and 
Nez  Perces  all  went  over  there  each  summer 
to  get  meat.  The  Flatheads  and  Nez  Perces 
took  the  cut-off  from  east  of  Missoula,  direct 
to  the  Falls — the  same  way  that  Lewis  went 

227 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

when  they  went  east.  They  came  from  the 
salmon  country  west  of  the  Rockies.  So  did 
the  Shoshonis,  part  of  the  time,  but  their 
usual  trail  to  the  buffalo  was  along  the  Mis- 
souri and  this  big  bend.  Their  real  home  was 
around  the  heads  of  the  river,  where  they  had 
been  driven  back  in. 

"But  they  were  bow-and-arrow  people,  while 
the  Blackfeet  had  guns  that  they  got  of 
the  traders,  far  north  and  east.  Two 
ways  the  Blackfeet  could  get  horses — over 
the  Kootenai  Trail,  where  Glacier  Park  is, 
or  down  in  here,  where  the  Shoshonis  lived ; 
for  the  Shoshonis  also  had  horses — they 
got  them  west  of  the  Rockies.  So  this  road 
was  partly  war  road  and  partly  hunting 
road.  I  don't  doubt  it  was  rather  plain  at 
that  time. 

"When  the  first  fur  traders  of  the  Rocky 
Mountain  Company  came  in  here,  right  after 
Lewis  and  Clark  came  back  and  told  their 
beaver  stories,  the  country  was  known,  you 
might  say.  It  was  at  the  Three  Forks  that 
Colter  and  Potts,  two  of  the  Lewis  and  Clark 
men,  were  attacked  by  the  Blackfeet,  and  Potts 
killed  and  Colter  forced  to  run  naked,  six 
miles  over  the  stones  and  cactus — till  at  last 
he  killed  his  nearest  pursuer  with  his  own 

228 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

spear,  and  hid  under  a  raft  of  driftwood  in  the 
Jefferson  River. 

"And  when  the  fur  men  came  up  and  built 
their  fort,  they  had  the  Lewis  and  Clark  hunter 
Drewyer  to  guide  them  at  first.  But  the 
Blackfeet  made  bitter  war  on  them.  They 
killed  Drewyer,  as  I  told  you,  not  far  ahead  of 
us  now,  at  the  Forks.  And  they  drove  out 
Andrew  Henry,  the  post  trader.  He  just  nat- 
urally quit  and  fled  south,  over  into  the  Henry 's 
Lake  country,  in  Idaho,  and  kept  on  down  the 
Snake  there,  till  he  built  his  famous  fort  in 
there,  so  long  known  as  Fort  Henry.  Well, 
he  came  in  this  way ;  and  on  ahead  is  where  he 
started  south,  on  a  keen  lope. 

"Can  we  get  across,  south  from  here,  into 
Henry's  Lake,  Billy?"  he  asked. 

"Easy  as  anything/'  said  Billy,  "only  the 
best  way  is  to  go  by  car  from  my  place.  Lots 
of  folks  go  every  day,  from  Butte,  Helena, 
all  these  towns  all  along  the  valleys.  Per- 
fectly good  road,  and  that's  faster  than  a  pack 
train." 

"That's  what  I  have  been  promising  my 
party !"  said  Uncle  Dick.  "But  they  shall  not 
go  fishing  until  they  have  got  a  complete  notion 
of  how  all  this  country  lies  and  how  Lewis  and 
Clark  got  through  it." 

229 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"They  hardly  ever  were  together  any  more, 
in  here,"  said  Rob.  "First  one,  then  the 
other  would  scout  out  ahead.  And  they  both 
were  sick.  Clark  was  laid  up  after  he  met 
the  boat  party  at  the  Forks,  and  Lewis  took 
his  turn  on  ahead.  What  good  sports  they 
were !" 

"Yes,"  said  John,  "and  what  good  sports  the 
men  were!  They'd  had  to  track  and  pole  up 
here,  all  the  way  from  the  Falls,  and  at  night 
they  were  worn  out.  Grub  was  getting  scarce 
and  they  hadn't  always  enough  to  keep  strong 
on.  And  above  the  Forks  they  had  to  wade 
waist  deep  in  ice  water,  for  hours,  slipping  on 
the  stones,  in  their  moccasins,  and  their  teeth 
chattering.  I'll  bet  they  hated  the  sight  of  a 
beaver,  for  it  was  the  beaver  dams  that  kept 
all  the  shores  full  of  willows  and  bayous,  so 
they  couldn't  walk  and  track  the  boat,  but 
had  to  take  to  the  stream  bed.  Why,  the  beaver 
were  so  bad  that  Lewis  got  lost  in  the  dams  and 
had  to  lie  out,  one  night !  And  he  didn't  know 
where  his  boats  were,  either." 

"Well,  that's  what  brought  in  the  first  wave 
of  whites,"  said  Uncle  Dick — "the  beaver. 
Then  after  they  had  got  the  beaver  about  all 
trapped  out,  say  fifty  years,  in  came  the  placer 
mines.  Then  came  the  deep  lode  mines — silver 

230 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

and   copper.     And   then  the   farmers.     Eh, 
Billy?" 

"Sure,"  said  Billy.  "And  then  the  tourists! 
Lots  of  folks  that  run  dude  ranches  make  more 
than  they  could  raising  hay.  The  Gallatin 
Valley,  above  me,  is  settled  solid.  It's  the 
finest  black-land  farm  country  in  all  the 
Rockies,  and  pretty  as  a  picture.  So's  the 
Beaverhead  Valley,  and  all  these  others,  pretty, 
too.  Irrigation  now,  instead  of  sluices;  and 
lots  of  the  dry  farmers  from  below  go  up  to 
Butte  and  work  in  the  mines  in  the  wintertime 
— eight  or  ten  thousand  men  in  mines  there  all 
the  time." 

"And  all  because  we'd  bought  this  country 
from  Napoleon !"  said  John. 

"I'm  reading  about  that,"  said  Billy.  "I've 
got  lots  of  books  and  maps,  and,  living  right 
in  here,  I've  spent  a  lot  of  time  studying  out 
where  Lewis  and  Clark  went.  I  tell  it  to  you, 
they  just  naturally  hot-footed  it  plumb  all 
through  here,  one  week  after  another.  They 
did  more  travel,  not  knowing  a  thing  about 
one  foot  of  this  country,  and  got  over  more  of 
it,  and  knew  more  about  it  every  day,  than  any 
party  of  men  since  then  have  done  in  five  times 
the  time  they  took." 

"And  didn't  know  where  they  were,  or  what 
231 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

would  be  next,"  assented  John.  "Those  chaps 
were  the  real,  really  real  thing!" 

In  this  way,  passing  through  or  near  one 
town  after  another,  traveling,  talking,  hurry- 
ing, too  busy  in  camp  to  loaf  an  hour,  our 
young  explorers  under  their  active  leaders 
exceeded  the  daily  average  of  William  Clark 
to  the  point  where,  above  the  present  power 
dam,  the  valley  of  the  Missouri  opens  out  above 
the  Canon  into  that  marvelous  landscape  which 
not  even  a  century  of  occupancy  has  changed 
much,  and  which  lay  before  them,  wildly  but 
pleasingly  beautiful,  now  as  it  had  for  the  first 
adventurers. 

"And  it's  ours!"  said  Rob,  jealously.  He 
took  off  his  hat  as  he  stood  gazing  down  over 
the  splendid  landscape  from  the  eminence  which 
at  that  time  they  had  surmounted. 

"Down  near  the  power  dam,  somewhere," 
said  Billy,  "is  where  Clark  must  have  struck 
into  the  river  again  from  the  trail  he'd  fol- 
lowed. He  was  about  all  in,  and  his  feet  in  bad 
shape,  but  he  would  not  give  up.  Then  he  lit  on 
out  ahead  again,  and  was  first  at  the  Forks." 

"Why,  you've  read  the  Journal,  too!"  said 
John,  and  Billy  nodded,  pleasantly. 

"Why,  yes,  I  think  every  man  who  lives  in 
Montana  ought  to  know  it  by  heart.  Yes,  or 

232 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

in  America.  I'd  rather  puzzle  it  all  out,  up  in 
here,  than  read  anything  else  that  we  get  in  by 
mail. 

"My  dad  was  all  over  here  in  early  days. 
Many  a  tale  he  told  of  the  placers  and  the  road 
agents — yes,  and  of  the  Vigilantes,  too,  that 
cleaned  out  the  road  agents  and  made  it  safe 
in  here,  to  travel  or  live." 

"Was  your  father  a  Vigilante,  sir?"  asked 
Jesse. 

"Well  now,  son,"  grinned  Billy,  "since  you 
ask  me,  I  more'n  half  believe  he  was!  But 
you  couldn't  get  any  of  those  old-time  law- 
and-order  men  to  admit  they'd  ever  been  Vigi- 
lantes. They  kept  it  mighty  secret.  Of  course, 
when  the  courts  got  in,  they  disbanded.  But 
they'd  busted  up  the  old  Henry  Plummer's 
gang  and  hung  about  twenty  of  the  road  agents, 
by  that  time.  They  was  some  active — both 
sides." 

At  last  the  party,  after  a  week  of  steady 
horse  work,  pitched  their  little  camp  about  mid- 
afternoon  at  the  crest  of  a  little  promontory 
from  which  they  commanded  a  marvelous  view 
of  the  great  valley  of  the  Three  Forks.  On 
either  hand  lay  a  beautiful  river,  the  Gallatin 
at  their  feet,  a  little  town  not  far,  the  Jefferson 
but  a  little  way. 

233 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"I  know  where  this  is !"  exclaimed  John.  "I 
know " 

"Not  a  word,  John!"  commanded  Uncle 
Dick.  "Enjoy  yourselves  now,  in  looking  at 
this  valley.  After  we've  taken  care  of  the 
horses  and  made  camp,  I'll  see  how  much  you 
know." 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

SUNSET   ON  THE   OLD   RANGE 

THEY  completed  their  camp  on  the  high 
point  which  they  had  reached.  Billy 
brought  in  Nigger's  panniers  full  of  wood  for 
the  cooking  fire,  and  they  had  water  in  the 
desert  bag  which  always  was  part  of  their 
camp  equipment,  so  they  needed  not  seek  a 
more  convenient  spot ;  nor  would  they  have  ex- 
changed this  for  any  other. 

"We've  seen  many  a  view,  fellows,"  said 
John,  as  the  three  stood  near  the  edge  of  the 
little  promontory  almost  in  the  village,  "but 
of  them  all,  in  any  country,  all  up  this  river, 
and  all  the  way  north  to  Kadiak  Island,  or  to 
the  Arctic  Circle — nothing  that  touches  this." 

They  had  hurriedly  finished  their  evening 
meal.  Their  robes  were  spread  on  the  ground, 
their  guns  and  rod  cases  lay  at  the  saddles  or 
against  the  panniers.  Their  maps,  journals, 
and  books  lay  on  the  robes  before  them.  But 
they  all  turned  to  take  in  the  beauties  of  the 
summer  sunset  now  unfolding  its  vast  screen 
of  vivid  coloring  in  the  West.  Thence  they 
16  235 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

looked,  first  up  one  valley  and  then  another, 
not  so  much  changed,  in  spite  of  the  occasional 
fields. 

"Of  course,"  said  John,  after  a  time,  "we 
know  this  spot,  and  know  why  you  and  Mr. 
Billy  brought  us  here.  It's  the  Fort  Rock  of 
Meriwether  Lewis — it  couldn't  be  anything 
else!" 

Uncle  Dick  smiled  and  nodded. 

"That's  what  she  is,"  nodded  Billy.  "Right 
here's  where  Cap'n  Lewis  stood  and  where  he 
said  was  a  good  place  for  a  fort — so  high,  you 
see,  so  no  Indians  could  jump  them  easy.  But 
they  never  did  build  the  first  fur  fort  here; 
that  was  higher  up,  on  the  Jefferson,  little  ways. 

"Up  yonder's  the  Gallatin — we're  up  her 
valley  a  little  way.  My  ranch  is  up  in  ten 
miles.  Yonder  used  to  be  quite  a  little  town 
like,  right  down  below  us.  Yon's  the  railroad, 
heading  for  the  divide,  where  we  came  over 
from  Prickly  Pear.  Other  way,  upstream,  is 
the  railroad  to  Butte.  Yon  way  lies  the  Madi- 
son; she  heads  off  southeast,  for  Yellowstone 
Park.  And  yon's  the  main  Jefferson ;  and  the 
Madison  joins  her  just  a  little  way  up.  And 
you've  seen  the  Gallatin  come  in — the  swiftest 
of  the  three. 

"Now  what  would  you  do,  if  you  was 
236 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

Lewis?"  he  added.  "And  which  way  would 
you  head  if  you  wanted  to  find  the  head  of  the 
true  Missouri  and  get  on  across  the  Rockies? 

"You  see,  we're  in  a  big  pocket  of  the 
Rockies  here — the  great  Continental  Divide 
sweeps  away  down  south  in  a  big  curve  here — 
made  just  so  these  three  rivers  and  their  hun- 
dred creeks  could  fan  out  in  here.  She's  plumb 
handsome  even  now,  and  she  was  plumb  wild 
then.  What  would  you  do?  Which  river 
would  you  take?" 

"I'd  scout  her  out,"  said  John. 

"They  did.  You  look  in  your  book  and  you'll 
find  that,  while  Lewis  was  in  here  Clark  was 
nigh  about  forty  miles  above  here;  he  plumb 
wore  his  men  out,  twenty-five  miles  the  first 
day  above  the  Forks,  twelve  miles  the  next. 
That  was  up  the  Jefferson,  you  see ;  they  picked 
it  for  the  real  Missouri,  you  see,  because  it 
was  fuller  and  quieter. 

"They  didn't  waste  any  time,  either  of  them, 
on  the  Gallatin.  That  left  the  Madison.  So 
Clark  comes  back  down  the  Jefferson  and 
they  forded  her,  away  above  the  Forks — no 
horses,  on  foot,  you  see — and  near  drowned 
that  trifling  fellow  Chaboneau,  the  Indian 
girl's  husband. 

"Then  Clark — he  wasn't  never  afraid  of 
237 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

getting  lost  or  getting  drowned,  and  he  never 
did  get  lost  once — he  strikes  off  across  the 
ridges,  southeast,  heading  straight  for  the 
Madison,  just  him  and  his  men,  and  I'll  bet  they 
was  good  and  tired  by  now,  for  they'd  walked 
all  the  way  from  Great  Falls,  hunting  Indians, 
and  hadn't  found  one  yet,  only  plenty  tracks. 

"So  he  finds  the  Madison  all  right,  and  comes 
down  her  to  the  Forks.  And  there — July  27th, 
wasn't  it,  the  Journal  says? — he  finds  Lewis 
and  all  eight  of  the  canoes  and  all  of  the  folks, 
in  camp  a  mile  above  the  Forks,  just  as  easy 
and  as  natural  as  if  they  hadn't  ever  known 
anything  except  just  this  country  here.  Of 
course,  they  had  met  almost  every  day,  but 
not  for  two  days  now. 

"By  that  time  they  had  their  camp  exactly 
on  the  spot  where  that  Indian  girl  had  been 
captured  by  the  Minnetarees  six  or  eight  years 
earlier.  She'd  had  a  long  walk,  both  ways! 
But  she  was  glad  to  get  back  home!  Nary 
Indian,  though  now  it  was  getting  time  for  all 
the  Divide  Indians  to  head  down  the  river, 
over  the  two  trails,  to  the  Falls,  where  the 
buffalo  were." 

"That's  a  story,  Billy!"  said  Jesse.  Billy 
stopped,  abashed,  forgetting  how  enthusiasm 
had  carried  him  on. 

238 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"Go  ahead,"  said  Uncle  Dick. 

"Well,  you  see,  I  read  all  about  it  all,  and 
I  get  all  het  up,  even  now/'  said  Billy;  "me 
raised  right  in  here,  and  all." 

"No  apologies,  Billy.    Go  on." 

"Well  then,  by  now  Clark,  he  was  right  nigh 
all  in.  His  feet  was  full  of  thorns  and  he  had 
a  boil  on  his  ankle,  and  he'd  got  a  fever  from 
drinking  cold  water  when  he  was  hot — or  that's 
how  he  figured  it.  Nothing  had  stopped  him 
till  now.  But  now  he  comes  in  and  throws 
down  on  a  robe,  and  he  says,  'Partner,  I'm  all 
in.  I  haven't  found  a  Indian.  But  I  allow 
that's  the  branch  to  follow.' 

"He  points  up  the  Jefferson.  Maybe  the 
Indian  girl  said  so,  too,  but  I  think  they'd  have 
taken  the  Jefferson,  anyhow.  They  all  agreed 
on  that. 

"Now  I've  heard  that  the  Indian  girl  kept 
pointing  south  and  saying  that  over  that  divide 
— that  would  be  over  the  Raynolds  Pass — was 
water  that  led  to  the  ocean.  I  don't  know  where 
they  get  that.  Some  say  the  Indian  girl  went 
up  the  Madison  with  Clark.  She  didn't;  she 
was  with  Lewis  at  the  boats  all  the  time.  Some 
say  that  Clark  got  as  far  south  as  the  canon 
of  the  Madison,  northwest  of  the  Yellowstone 
Park.  He  didn't  and  couldn't.  Even  if  he  did 

239 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

and  was  alone,  that  wouldn't  have  led  him  over 
Raynolds  Pass.  That's  a  hundred  miles,  pretty 
near. 

"I  wonder  what  would  have  happened  to 
them  people,  now,  if  they  all  had  picked  the 
wrong  branch  and  gone  up  the  Madison?  If 
they'd  got  on  Henry's  Lake,  which  is  the  head 
of  one  arm  of  the  Snake,  and  had  got  started 
on  the  Snake  waters — good  night !  We'd  never 
have  heard  of  them  again. 

"But  I  don't  think  the  Indian  girl  knew  any- 
thing much  about  the  Snake,  though  her  people 
hunted  all  these  branches.  Her  range  was  on 
the  Jefferson.  She  was  young,  too.  Anyhow, 
that's  what  they  called  the  Missouri,  till  she 
began  to  peter  out.  That  was  where  they  named 
this  place  where  we  are  now.  They  concluded, 
since  all  the  three  rivers  run  so  near  even,  and 
split  so  wide,  they'd  call  them  after  three  great 
men,  Jefferson,  Madison,  and  Gallatin.  But 
that  wasn't  till  two  weeks  after  they'd  left  the 
Forks.  Most  folks  thought  they'd  sprung  the 
names  as  soon  as  they  seen  the  Forks,  but  they 
didn't. 

"Lots  of  people  right  in  here,  too,  even  now, 
they  think  that  Lewis  and  Clark  wintered  right 
here  at  the  Forks  or  on  up  near  Dillon.  I've 
heard  them  argue  that  and  get  hot  over  it. 

240 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

Some  said  they  wintered  on  an  island,  near 
Dillon.  Of  course,  they  allow  that  Lewis  and 
Clark  got  across,  but  they  say  they  was  gone 
three  years,  not  two.  That's  about  as  much  as 
the  old  Journal  is  known  to-day ! 

"Me  living  in  here,  I  know  all  the  creeks 
from  here  to  the  Sawtooth  and  Bitter  Roots, 
and  my  dad  knew  them,  and  I'll  tell  you  it's  a 
fright,  even  now,  to  follow  out  exactly  where 
all  they  went,  or  just  how  they  got  over.  The 
names  on  most  of  their  creeks  are  changed 
now,  so  you  can't  hardly  tell  them.  About  the 
best  book  to  follow  her  through  on  is  that  rail- 
road man,  Wheeler.  He  took  a  pack  train, 
most  ways,  and  stayed  with  it. 

"People  get  all  mixed  up  on  the  old  stuff, 
because  we  travel  by  rail  now,  so  much.  For 
instance,  Beaverhead  Rock — and  that's  been 
a  landmark  ever  since  Lewis  and  Clark  come 
through — is  disputed  even  now.  You  can  start 
a  fight  down  at  Dillon  any  time  by  saying  that 
their  Beaverhead  Rock  is  really  Rattlesnake 
Rock — though  I'll  have  to  own  it  looks  a  lot 
more  like  a  beaver  than  the  real  rock  does. 
That  real  one  now  is  mostly  called  the  Point 
of  Rocks. 

"That's  the  way  it  goes,  you  see — everything 
gets  all  mixed  up.  The  miners  named  a  lot 

241 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

of  the  old  Lewis  and  Clark  streams  all  over 
again.  Boulder  Creek  once  was  Frazier's 
Creek ;  Philosophy  Creek  they  changed  to  Wil- 
low Creek,  just  to  be  original.  The  Blacktail, 
away  up  in,  was  first  named  after  McNeal, 
and  the  North  Boulder,  this  side  of  there,  was 
first  called  after  Fields.  The  Pipestone  used 
to  be  the  Panther.  You  know  the  Big  Hole 
River,  of  course,  where  Butte  gets  the  city 
water  piped  from — used  to  be  fine  fishing  till 
they  spoiled  it  by  fishing  it  to  death — well,  that 
was  called  Wisdom  River  by  Lewis.  And  I 
think  if  he'd  been  right  wise,  he'd  have  left 
his  boats  at  the  mouth  and  started  right  up 
there,  on  foot,  and  not  up  the  Jefferson.  She 
was  shallow,  but  if  he'd  only  known  it,  she'd 
have  led  him  to  the  Divide  easier  than  the  way 
they  went,  and  saved  a  lot  of  time.  But,  of 
course,  they  didn't  know  that." 

"Go  on,  Billy,  go  on!"  said  Rob,  eagerly. 
"You're  the  first  man  I  ever  knew  who'd  actu- 
ally been  over  this  ground  in  here.  All  we've 
done  has  been  to  read  about  it;  and  that's 
different.  A  country  on  a  map  is  one  thing,  but 
a  country  lying  out  of  doors  on  the  ground  is 
different." 

"I'll  agree  to  that,"  said  Billy.  "If  you  ever 
once  figure  out  a  country  by  yourself,  you 

242 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

never  get  lost  in  it  again.  You  can  easy  get 
lost  with  a  map  and  a  compass. 

"Well  now,  the  miners  changed  more  names, 
too.  It  was  on  Willard's  Creek,  named  after 
one  of  the  Lewis  and  Clark  men,  that  they 
found  the  gold  at  Bannack  camp.  They  called 
that  Grasshopper  Creek  and  left  poor  Willard 
out.  And  then  they  called  the  Philanthropy 
River,  which  comes  in  from  the  south,  opposite 
to  the  Wisdom — Lewis  called  them  that  be- 
cause Thomas  Jefferson  was  so  wise  and  so 
philanthropic,  you  know — well,  they  changed 
that  to  the  Stinking  Water ! 

"Yet  'Philanthropy'  would  have  been  a  good 
name  for  that.  On  one  of  the  side  creeks  to 
it  they  found  Alder  Gulch  in  1863 ;  and  Alder 
Gulch  put  Montana  on  the  map  and  started  the 
bull  outfits  moving  out  from  Benton,  at  the 
head  of  navigation.  That's  where  Virginia 
City  is  now.  Nice  little  town,  but  not  wild  like 
she  was. 

"Now,  the  old  trail — where  the  road  agents 
used  to  waylay  the  travelers — led  from  Ban- 
nack to  the  Rattlesnake,  down  the  Rattlesnake 
to  the  Jefferson,  down  the  Jefferson  to  the 
Beaverhead  Rock,  then  across  the  Jefferson 
and  over  the  Divide  to  Philanthropy.  And 
that  was  one  sweet  country  to  live  in,  in  those 

243 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

days,  my  dad  said!  The  road  agents  had  a 
fine  organization,  and  they  knew  every  man 
going  out  with  dust.  So  they'd  lay  in  wait  and 
kill  him.  They  killed  over  a  hundred  men, 
that  way,  till  the  Vigilantes  broke  in  on  them. 
The  best  men  in  early  Montana  were  among 
the  Vigilantes — all  the  law-and-order  men 
were.  But  right  from  where  we're  standing 
now,  on  the  Lewis  Rock,  you're  looking  over 
one  of  the  wildest  parts  of  this  country,  or 
any  other  country.  You  ought  to  read  Lang- 
ford's  book,  Vigilante  Days  and  Ways.  I've 
got  that  in  my  library,  up  at  my  ranch,  too." 

"You  know  your  part  of  this  country  mighty 
well,  Billy,"  said  Uncle  Dick,  after  a  time. 
"I've  known  you  did,  for  a  long  time." 

"I  love  it,  that's  all !"  said  the  young  ranch- 
man. 

"Now  what  shall  we  do,  sir?"  he  added, 
after  a  time ;  "go  on  up  to  my  ranch,  or  go  on 
to  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  River,  or  go  to 
the  true  head  of  the  Missouri  River,  or  go  back 
to  Great  Falls — or  what?" 

"What  do  you  want  to  do,  Billy?" 

j     "Anything  suits  me.    Barring  the  towns,  I 

can  go  anywhere  on  earth  with  Sleepy  and 

Nigger,  and  almost  anywhere  on  earth  with  my 

flivver.    I  wouldn't  stay  here  for  a  camp,  be- 

244 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

cause  it's  not  convenient.  The  musquitoes  are 
about  done  now,  and  the  camping's  fine  all 
over.  Fishing's  good,  too,  right  now;  and  I 
know  where  they  are." 

"I'll  tell  you,"  said  Uncle  Dick;  "we'll  move 
up  one  more  march  or  so,  to  the  Beaverhead 
Rock.  We'll  camp  there,  and  make  a  little 
more  medicine  before  we  decide. 

"I  came  here" — he  turned  to  the  others — "to 
have  you  see  the  sunset,  here  on  the  old  range. 
Are  you  satisfied  with  the  trip  thus  far?" 

"We'd  not  have  missed  it  for  the  world," 
said  Rob,  at  once.  "It's  the  best  we've  ever 
had.  In  our  own  country — and  finding  out  for 
ourselves  how  they  found  our  country  for  us ! 
That's  what  I  call  fine!" 

"Roll  up  the  plunder  for  to-night,"  said 
Uncle  Dick.  "The  sunset's  over." 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

NEARING  THE  SOURCE 

WELL,  Jesse,  how'd  you  sleep  last  night  ?" 
inquired  Billy  in  the  morning,  as  he 
pushed  the  coffee  pot  back  from  the  edge  of  the 
little  fire  and  turned  to  Jesse  when  he  emerged 
from  his  blankets. 

"Not  too  well,"  answered  Jesse,  rubbing  his 
eyes.  "Fact  is,  it's  too  noisy  in  this  country. 
Up  North  where  we  used  to  live,  it  was  quiet, 
unless  the  dogs  howled;  but  in  here  there's 
towns  and  railroads  all  over — more  than  a 
dozen  towns  we  passed,  coming  up  from  the 
Great  Falls,  and  if  you  don't  hear  the  railroad 
whistles  all  night,  you  think  you  do.  Down 
right  below  us,  you  can  throw  a  rock  into  the 
town,  almost,  and  up  at  the  Forks  there'll  be 
another  squatting  down  waiting  for  you.  All 
right  for  gasoline,  Billy,  but  we're  supposed  to 
be  using  the  tracking  line  and  setting  pole." 

"Sure  we  are — until  we  meet  the  Shoshonis 
and  get  some  horses." 

"Well,  I  don't  want  to  camp  by  a  railroad 
or  a  wire  fence  any  more." 

246 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"No  ?  Well,  we'll  see  what  we  can  do.  Any- 
how, one  thing  you  ought  to  be  glad  about." 

"What's  that?'' 

"Why,  that  you  don't  have  to  walk  down 
into  that  ice  water  and  pole  a  boat  or  drag  it 
for  two  or  three  hours  before  breakfast.  Yet 
that's  what  those  poor  men  had  to  do.  And 
three  times  they  mention,  between  the  Forks 
and  the  mountains,  the  whole  party  had  to  wait 
breakfast  till  somebody  killed  some  meat.  Any- 
how, we've  got  some  eggs  and  marmalade." 

"Well,  they  got  meat,"  demurred  Jesse,  seat- 
ing himself  as  he  laced  his  shoes. 

"Thanks  to  Drewyer,  they  usually  did.  He 
got  five  deer,  one  day,  and  about  every  time 
he  went  out  he  hung  up  something.  I  think 
he'd  got  to  the  front  in  the  party  now,  next  to 
Lewis  and  Clark.  Chaboneau  they  don't  speak 
well  of. 

"Shields  was  a  good  man,  and  the  two  Fields 
boys.  But,  though  Clark  was  mighty  sick,  and 
Lewis  got  down,  too,  for  a  day  or  so,  in  here, 
they  were  about  the  best  men  left.  The  others 
were  wearing  out  by  now. 

"You  see" — here  Billy  flipped  a  cake  over  in 
the  pan — "they  couldn't  have  had  much  wool 
clothing  left  by  now — they  were  in  buckskin, 
and  buckskin  is  about  as  good  as  brown  paper 

247 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

when  it's  wet.  They  had  no  hobnails,  and 
their  broken,  wet  moccasins  slipped  all  over 
those  slick  round  stones.  You  ever  wade  a 
trout  stream,  you  boys?" 

"I  should  say  so !" 

"Well,  then  you  know  how  it  is.  While  the 
water  is  below  your  knees  you  can  stand  it 
quite  a  while.  When  it  gets  along  your  thighs 
you  begin  to  get  cold.  When  it's  waist  deep, 
you  chill  mighty  soon  and  can't  stand  it  long — 
though  Lewis  stripped  and  dived  in  eight  feet 
of  water  to  get  an  otter  he  had  shot.  And 
slipping  on  wet  rocks " 

"Don't  we  know  about  that !  We  waded  up 
the  Rat  River,  on  the  Arctic  Circle." 

"You  did!  You've  traveled  like  that?  Well, 
then  you  can  tell  what  the  men  were  standing 
here.  They  hadn't  half  clothes,  a  lot  of  them 
were  sick  with  boils  and  'turners,'  as  Clark 
calls  them.  Some  were  nearly  crippled.  But 
in  this  water,  ice  water,  waist  deep,  they  had 
to  get  eight  boats  up  that  big  creek  yonder — 
beaver  meadows  all  along,  so  they  couldn't 
track.  Sockets  broke  off  their  setting  poles,  so 
Captain  Lewis,  he  ties  on  some  fish  gigs  he'd 
brought  along.  One  way  or  another,  they  got 
on  up. 

"They  now  began  to  get  short  rations,  too. 
248 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

At  first  they  couldn't  get  any  trout,  or  the 
whitefish — those  fish  with  the  'long  mouths* 
that  Lewis  tells  about.  I'll  bet  they  never  tried 
grasshoppers.  But  along  above  here  they  be- 
gan to  get  fish,  as  the  game  got  scarcer.  Lewis 
tells  of  setting  their  net  for  them/' 

"You  certainly  have  been  reading  that  little 
old  Journal,  Billy!" 

"Why  shouldn't  I  ?  It's  one  great  book,  son. 
More  I  read  it,  the  more  I  see  how  practical 
those  men  were.  Now,  those  men  were  all  fine 
rifle  shots,  and  they'd  go  against  anything, 
though  along  here  there  wasn't  many  grizzlies, 
and  all  of  them  shy,  not  bold  like  the  buffalo 
grizzlies  at  the  Falls.  But  they  didn't  hunt  for 
sport — it  was  meat  they  wanted.  Once  in  a 
while  a  snag  of  venison ;  antelope  hard  to  get ; 
no  buffalo  now,  and  very  few  elk ;  by  now,  even 
ducks  and  geese  began  to  look  good,  and  trout. 

"The  ducks  and  geese  and  cranes  were  all 
through  here — breeding  grounds  all  along. 
That  was  molting  time  and  they  caught  them  in 
their  hands.  They  killed  beaver  with  the  set- 
ting poles,  and  one  day  the  men  killed  several 
otter  with  their  tomahawks,  though  I  doubt  if 
they  could  eat  otter.  You  see,  as  Clark's  notes 
say,  the  beaver  were  here  in  thousands.  I  sup- 
pose when  so  big  a  party  went  splashing  up 

249 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

the  creek  the  beaver  and  otter  would  get  scared 
and  swim  out  to  the  main  stream,  and  there 
some  one  would  hit  them  over  the  head  as  they 
swam  by/' 

"One  thing,"  said  Jesse,  "I  don't  think  they 
flogged  any  of  the  men  any  more.  I  don't  re- 
member any  since  they  left  the  Mandans." 

"Maybe  they  didn't  need  it,  and  maybe  their 
leaders  had  learned  more.  Ever  since  Lewis 
picked  the  right  river  at  the  Marias  forks,  I 
reckon  the  men  relied  on  him  more.  Then, 
he'd  be  poking  around  shooting  at  the  sun  and 
stars  with  his  astronomy  machines,  and  that 
sort  of  made  them  respect  him.  Clark  was  a 
good  sport.  Lewis,  I  reckon,  was  harder  to 
get  along  with.  But  they  both  must  have 
been  pretty  white  with  the  men.  They  tell  of 
the  hardships  of  the  men,  and  how  game 
and  patient  they  are — not  a  whimper  about 
quitting." 

"I  know,"  said  Jesse,  hauling  out  his  worn 
copy  of  the  Journal  from  his  bed  roll  and  turn- 
ing the  leaves ;  "they  speak  of  the  way  the  men 
felt: 

"We  Set  out  early  (Wind  N.E.)  proceeded  on  passed 
Several  large  Islands  and  three  Small  ones,  the  river 
much  more  Sholey  than  below  which  obliges  us  to  haul 
the  Canoes  over  those  Sholes  which  Suckceed  each  other 
at  Short  intervales  emencefly  laborious;  men  much 

250 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

fatigued  and  weakened  by  being  continually  in  the 
water  drawing  the  Canoes  over  the  Sholes,  encamped 
on  the  Lard  Side  men  complain  verry  much  of  the 
emence  labour  they  are  obliged  to  undergo  &  wish  much 
to  leave  the  river.  I  passify  them,  the  weather  Cool, 
and  nothing  to  eate  but  venison,  the  hunters  killed  three 
Deer  to  day. 

"Anxious  times  about  now,  eh?  But  still, 
I  don't  think  the  leaders  ever  once  lost  their 
nerve.  Here's  what  Lewis  wrote  about  it : 

"We  begin  to  feel  considerable  anxiety  with  rispect 
to  the  Snake  Indians,  if  we  do  not  find  them  or  some 
other  nation  who  have  horses  I  fear  the  successful 
issue  of  our  voyage  will  be  very  doubtfull  or  at  all 
events  much  more  difficult  in  it's  accomplishment,  we 
are  now  several  hundred  miles  within  the  bosom  of 
this  wild  and  mountanous  country,  where  game  may 
rationally  be  expected  shortly  to  become  scarce  and 
subsistence  precarious  without  any  information  with 
rispect  to  the  country  not  knowing  how  far  these  moun- 
tains continue,  or  wher  to  direct  our  course  to  pass 
them  to  advantage  or  inter  sept  a  navigable  branch  of 
the  Columbia,  or  even  were  we  on  such  an  one  the 
probability  is  that  we  should  not  find  any  timber  within 
these  mountains  large  enough  for  canoes  if  we  judge 
from  the  portion  of  them  through  which  we  have  passed, 
however  I  still  hope  for  the  best,  and  intend  taking  a 
tramp  myself  in  a  few  days  to  find  these  yellow  gentle- 
men if  possible,  my  two  principal  consolations  are 
that  from  our  present  position  it  is  impossible  that  the 
S.W.  fork  can  head  with  the  waters  of  any  other  river 
but  the  Columbia,  and  that  if  any  Indians  can  subsist 
in  the  form  of  a  nation  in  these  mountains  with  the 
means  they  have  of  acquiring  food  we  can  also  subsist. 
17  251 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"No  wonder  the  men  wanted  horses  now — 
they  knew  the  river's  end  was  near.  And  yet 
they  were  four  hundred  miles,  right  here,  from 
the  head  of  the  Missouri !"  Billy  had  his  Jour- 
nal pretty  well  in  mind,  so  he  went  on  frying 
bacon. 

"Why,  what  you  talking  about,  Billy?  They 
made  the  Forks  by  July  27th,  and  by  the  end  of 
August  they  were  over  the  Divide,  headed  for 
the  Columbia !" 

"Sure.  And  at  the  Two  Forks,  where  the 
Red  Rock  River  turns  south,  the  other  creek — 
Horse  Prairie  Creek  that  they  took — only  ran 
thirty  miles  in  all.  The  south  branch  was  the 
real  Missouri,  but  they  kept  to  the  one  that 
went  west.  That  was  good  exploring,  and 
good  luck,  both.  It  took  them  over,  at  last." 

"But,  Billy,  everybody  knows  that  Lewis  and 
Clark  went  to  the  head  of  the  Missouri." 

"Then  everybody  knows  wrong!  They 
didn't.  If  they  had  they'd  never  have  got  over 
that  year,  nor  maybe  ever  in  any  year.  I  tell 
you  they  had  luck — luck  and  judgment  and  the 
Indian  girl.  Sacagawea  kept  telling  them  this 
was  her  country;  that  her  people  were  that 
way — west;  that  they'd  get  horses.  For  that 
matter,  there  were  strong  Indian  trails,  regu- 
lar roads,  coming  in  from  the  south,  north  and 

252 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

west;  but  it  wasn't  quite  late  enough  for  the 
Indians  to  be  that  far  east  on  the  fall  buffalo 
hunt  at  the  Great  Falls.  It  took  them  more 
than  a  month  to  figure  out  the  trail  from  here 
to  the  top.  But  if  they  had  started  south,  down 
the  Red  Rock "  ' 

"Tell  me  about  that,  Billy." 

"We're  working  too  hard  before  breakfast, 
son!  Go  get  the  others  up  while  I  fry  these 
eggs.  If  we  don't  get  off  the  Fort  Rock  and 
on  our  way,  somebody'll  think  we're  crazy, 
camping  up  here." 

Soon  they  were  all  sitting  at  breakfast 
around  the  remnants  of  the  little  fire,  and  after 
that  Billy  went  after  the  horses  while  the  others 
got  the  packs  ready. 

Jesse  was  excitedly  going  over  with  Rob 
and  John  some  of  the  things  which  Billy  had 
been  saying  to  him.  Uncle  Dick  only  smiled. 

"First  class  in  engineering  and  geography, 
stand  up !"  said  he,  as  he  seated  himself  on  his 
lashed  bed  roll.  The  three  boys  with  pretended 
gravity  stood  and  saluted. 

"Now  put  down  a  few  figures  in  your  heads, 
or  at  least  your  notebooks.  How  high  up  are 
we  here?" 

"Do  you  mean  altitude,  or  distance,  sir?" 
asked  Rob. 

253 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"I  mean  both.  Well,  I'll  tell  you.  Our 
altitude  here  is  four  thousand  and  forty-five 
feet.  That's  twenty-five  hundred  and  twenty 
feet  higher  than  the  true  head  of  the  Missis- 
sippi River — and  we're  not  to  the  head  of  the 
Missouri  by  a  long  shot,  even  now. 

"And  how  far  have  we  come,  say  to  the  Three 
Forks,  just  above  here?" 

"That's  easy,"  answered  John,  looking  at 
his  book.  "It's  twenty-five  hundred  and  forty- 
seven  miles,  according  to  the  last  river  meas- 
urements; but  Lewis  and  Clark  call  it  twenty- 
eight  hundred  and  forty-eight  miles." 

"That's  really  of  no  importance,"  said  Uncle 
Dick.  "The  term  'mile'  means  nothing  in  travel 
such  as  theirs.  The  real  unit  was  the  day's 
work  of  'hearty,  healthy,  and  robust  young 
men/  One  set  of  figures  is  good  as  the  other. 

"Still,  it  may  be  interesting  to  see  how  much 
swifter  the  Missouri  River  is  than  the  Father 
of  Waters.  From  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  to  the 
source  of  the  Mississippi  is  twenty-five  hundred 
and  fifty-three  miles.  Up  our  river,  to  where 
we  stand,  is  just  six  miles  short  of  that,  yet 
the  drop  is  more  than  twenty-five  hundred  feet 
more.  One  drops  eight  and  a  quarter  inches 
to  the  mile,  and  the  other  nineteen  inches  to  the 
mile. 

254 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"But  understand,  we're  talking  now  of  the 
upper  thread  of  the  Mississippi  River,  and  of 
the  Three  Forks  of  our  river — which  isn't  by 
any  means  at  its  head,  even  measuring  to  the 
head  of  the  shortest  of  the  three  big  rivers 
that  meet  here.  Now,  add  three  hundred  and 
ninety-eight  miles  to  twenty-five  hundred  and 
forty-seven  miles.  See  what  you  got?" 

"That's  twenty-nine  hundred  and  forty-five 
miles !"  exclaimed  John.  "Is  it  that  far  from 
the  head  to  St.  Louis?" 

"Yes,  it  is.  And  if  you  took  the  Lewis  and 
Clark  measurements  to  the  Forks  it  would  be 
thirty-two  hundred  and  forty-seven  miles. 

"And  if  we  took  their  distances  to  the  place 
where  they  left  their  canoes — that's  what  they 
called  Shoshoni  Cove,  where  the  river  petered 
out  for  boats — we'd  have  three  thousand  and 
ninety-six  miles ;  two  hundred  and  forty-seven 
miles  above  here,  as  they  figured  it,  and  they 
weren't  at  the  summit  even  then.  Now  if  we'd 
take  their  probable  estimate,  if  they'd  finished 
the  distance  to  the  real  head  of  the  Missouri, 
we'd  have  to  allow  them  about  thirty-two  hun- 
dred and  forty-nine  miles  plus  their  overrun, 
at  least  fifty  miles. 

"Yes,  if  they'd  have  gone  to  the  real  source, 
they'd  have  sworn  it  was  over  thirty-three 

255 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

hundred  miles  to  St.  Louis,  and  over  forty-five 
hundred  miles  to  the  Gulf.  The  modern  meas- 
urements make  it  forty-two  hundred  and 
twenty-one  miles. 

"So,  young  gentlemen,  you  can  see  that  you 
are  now  coming  toward  the  head  of  the  largest 
continuous  waterway  in  the  world.  It  is  five 
hundred  miles  longer  than  the  Amazon  in 
South  America,  and  more  than  twelve  hundred 
miles  longer  than  the  river  Nile,  in  Africa. 

"Now,  Meriwether  Lewis  did  not  know  as 
much  about  all  these  things  as  we  do  now,  yet 
see  how  he  felt  about  it,  at  his  camp  fire,  not 
so  far  from  here : 

"The  mountains  do  not  appear  very  high  in  any  di- 
rection tho'  the  tops  of  some  of  them  are  partially  cov- 
ered with  snow,  this  convinces  me  that  we  have  ascended 
to  a  great  hight  since  we  have  entered  the  rocky 
Mountains,  yet  the  ascent  has  been  so  gradual  along 
the  vallies  that  it  was  scarcely  perceptable  by  land.  I 
do  not  believe  that  the  world  can  furnish  an  example 
of  a  river  runing  to  the  extent  which  the  Missouri  and 
Jefferson's  rivers  do  through  such  a  mountainous  coun- 
try and  at  the  same  time  so  navigable  as  they  are.  if 
the  Columbia  furnishes  us  such  another  example,  a 
communication  across  the  continent  by  water  will  be 
practicable  and  safe. 

"Class  dismissed.  I  see  Billy  has  got  the 
horses."  The  boys  put  away  their  maps  and 
rolled  their  beds. 

256 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

All  of  the  party  being  good  packers,  it  was 
not  long  before  they  had  left  their  camp  ground 
on  the  knoll  and  were  off  upstream  once  more, 
edging  the  willow  flats  and  swinging  to  the 
ford  of  the  Madison,  which  they  made  with  no 
great  danger  at  that  stage  of  the  water.  Thence 
they  headed  back  for  the  Jefferson  fork,  having 
by  now  got  a  good  look  at  the  great  valleys 
of  the  Three  Forks. 

"Which  way,  sir?"  asked  Billy  now  of  their 
leader.  "Shall  we  stop  at  the  real  headquarters 
camp  of  the  Three  Forks,  just  about  a  mile 
up — where  the  Indian  girl  told  them  she  had 
been  taken  prisoner  when  she  was  a  child?" 

"Too  near  town  !"  sung  out  Jesse,  who  over- 
heard the  question.  "Let's  shake  the  railroad." 

"She's  right  hard  to  shake,  up  in  here,"  re- 
joined Billy.  "Off  to  the  right  is  the  N.P., 
heading  for  Butte,  up  the  Pipestone.  We 
couldn't  shake  the  left-hand  branch  of  her  this 
side  of  Twin  Bridges,  and  that's  above  the 
Beaverhead  Rock.  From  there  upstream  to 
Dillon,  along  the  Beaverhead  River,  there  isn't 
any  railroad.  We  can  swing  wide,  except 
where  she  canons  up  on  us,  and  may  be  get 
away  from  the  whistles.  Only,  if  we  go  as  far 
as  Dillon,  we  hit  the  O.S.L.  She  runs  south, 
down  the  Red  Rock,  which  is  the  real  Mis- 

257 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

souri  River.  And  she  runs  up  the  Big  Hole, 
which  the  Journal  calls  the  Wisdom  River. 
And  there's  a  railroad  up  Philosophy  Creek, 
too " 

"And  up  all  the  cardinal  virtues !"  exclaimed 
Uncle  Dick.  "I  don't  blame  the  boys  for  get- 
ting peeved.  Now,  we  don't  care  for  canon 
scenery  so  much,  nor  for  willow  flats  with  no 
beaver  in  them.  I  would  like  the  boys  to  see 
the  Beaverhead  Rock  and  get  a  general  notion 
of  how  many  of  these  confusing  little  creeks 
there  were  that  had  to  be  worked  out. 

"I'd  like  them,  too,  to  get  a  general  idea  of 
the  old  gold  fields.  We're  right  in  the  heart 
of  those  tremendous  placers  that  Lewis  and 
Clark  never  dreamed  about.  I'd  like  them  to 
know,  on  the  ground,  not  on  the  map,  how  the 
old  road  agents'  trail  ran,  between  Bannack 
and  Virginia  City.  I'd  like  them  to  get  a  true 
idea  of  how  Lewis  and  Clark  worked  out  their 
way,  over  the  Divide.  Lastly,  I'd  like  them  to 
see  where  the  true  Missouri  heads  south  and 
leaves  the  real  Lewis  and  Clark  trail. 

"Now,  what's  the  best  point  to  head  for, 
Billy,  for  a  sort  of  central  camp  ?  I  don't  think 
we  can  do  more  than  go  to  the  summit,  this 
trip.  What  do  you  say?" 

"Well,  sir,  I'd  say  the  Shoshoni  Cove,  where 
258 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

they  left  their  canoes  and  took  horses,  would 
be  about  the  most  central  point  for  that.  That'll 
bring  us  to  the  last  forks — what  they  call  the 
Two  Forks." 

"But  how  about  the  Beaverhead  Rock?" 

"We  ought  to  see  that,"  said  Rob,  at  the  time. 
"That's  as  famous  as  a  landmark  as  almost 
anything  on  the  whole  river." 

"We  can  get  in  there  easy  enough  and  get 
out,"  said  Billy.  "It's  just  a  question  of  time 
on  the  trail.  Taking  it  easy,  give  us  a  week, 
ten  days,  on  the  way  to  the  Cove,  taking  in  the 
Rock  for  one  camp.  It's  not  half  as  far  by  land 
as  it  is  by  water." 

"What  do  you  say,  boys  ?  Shall  we  travel  by 
rail  or  pack  train  now  ?" 

With  one  shout  they  all  voted  for  the  pack 
train.  "We  couldn't  get  along  without  Billy 
now,  anyhow,"  said  Jesse,  "because  he  knows 
the  Journal  as  well  as  we  do,  and  he  knows  the 
country  better." 

"Thank  you,  son.  Well,  I  guess  old  Sleepy 
won't  die  before  we  get  there,  though  he  pre- 
tends he  can  hardly  go.  Say  we  get  back  into 
the  side  creeks  a  little  and  pick  up  a  mess  of 
fish  now  and  then,  and  make  the  Beaverhead 
a  couple  of  camps  later?  How'd  that  be?" 

"That's  all  right,  I  think,"  said  Rob.  "I'd 
259 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

like  to  get  a  look  at  the  main  river,  to  see  why 
the  names  change  on  it  so.  First  it's  the  main 
Missouri;  then  they  conclude  to  call  it  the 
Jefferson — only  because  the  other  two  forks 
spread  so  wide  there.  Then  it  runs  along  all 
right,  and  all  at  once  they  call  it  the  Beaver- 
head.  And  before  it  gets  used  to  that  name 
they  change  it  to  Red  River  for  no  reason  at 
all,  or  because  it  heads  south  and  runs  near  a 
painted  butte.  Yet  it  is  one  continuous  river 
all  the  way." 

"The  real  way  to  name  a  river,"  said  Billy, 
sagely,  is  after  you  know  all  about  it.  You 
got  to  remember  that  Lewis  and  Clark  saw 
this  for  the  first  time.  By  the  time  we  make 
the  Beaverhead  Rock,  we'll  be  willing  to  say 
they  had  a  hard  job.  People  could  get  lost 
in  these  hills  even  now,  if  they  stepped  off  the 
road." 

"All  set  for  the  Beaverhead  Rock!"  said 
Uncle  Dick,  decisively. 

Soon  they  had  settled  to  their  steady  jog, 
Nigger  sometimes  getting  lost  in  the  willows, 
and  Sleepy  straying  off  in  his  hunt  for  thistles 
when  the  country  opened  out  more.  They  did 
not  hurry,  but  moved  along  among  the  mead- 
'ows  and  fields,  talking,  laughing,  studying  the 
wide  and  varying  landscape  about  them.  That 

260 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

night,  as  Billy  had  promised  them,  they  had 
their  first  trout  for  supper,  which  Billy  brought 
in  after  a  short  sneak  among  the  willows  with 
a  stick  for  a  rod  and  a  grasshopper  for  bait. 

"That's  nothing/'  said  he.  "I'll  take  you  to 
where's  some  real  fishing,  if  you  like." 

"Where's  that?"  demanded  John,  who  also 
was  getting  very  keen  set  for  sport  of  some 
sort. 

"Oh,  off  toward  the  utmost  source  of  the 
true  Missouri !"  said  he.  "You  just  wait.  I'll 
show  you  something." 


CHAPTER  XXV 

BEAVERHEAD  CAMP 

"IT'S  quite  a  bit  of  country,  ater  all,  between 
1  the  Forks  and  the  head,  isn't  it  ?"  remarked 
Rob,  on  their  fourth  day  out  from  the  junction 
of  the  river.  "I  don't  blame  them  for  taking 
a  month  to  it." 

"We're  beating  them  on  their  schedule,  at 
that,"  said  the  studious  John.  "At  the  Forks 
we  were  exactly  even  up,  July  27th;  we'd 
beat  them  just  exactly  one  year  at  that  point, 
which  they  called  the  head  of  the  river.  But 
they  went  slow  in  here,  in  these  big  beaver 
meadows ;  ten  miles  daily  was  big  travel,  wad- 
ing, and  not  half  of  that  gained  in  actual 
straight  distance.  It  took  them  ten  days  to 
the  Beaverhead.  How  far's  that  from  here, 
Billy?" 

"Well,  what  do  you  think?"  said  Billy,  pull- 
ing up  and  sitting  crosswise  in  his  saddle  as  he 
turned.  "See  anything  particular  from  this 
side  the  hills?" 

"I  know !"  exclaimed  Rob.  "That's  the  Rock 
over  yonder — across  the  river." 

262 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"Check  it  up  on  the  Journal,  Rob,"  said 
Uncle  Dick 

Rob  dismounted  and  opened  his  saddle 
pocket,  producing  his  copy  of  the  cherished 
work. 

"Sure  it  is!"  said  he.    "Here  it  says: 

"The  Indian  woman  recognized  the  point  of  a  high 
plain  to  our  right  which  she  informed  us  was  not  very 
distant  from  the  summer  retreat  of  her  nation  on  a 
river  beyond  the  mountains  which  runs  to  the  west, 
this  hill  she  says  her  nation  calls  the  beaver's  head  from 
a  conceived  re(se)mblance  of  it's  figure  to  the  head  of 
that  animal,  she  assures  us  that  we  shall  either  find 
her  people  on  this  river  or  on  the  river  immediately 
west  of  it's  source ;  which  from  it's  present  size  cannot 
be  very  distant,  as  it  is  now  all  important  with  us  to 
meet  with  those  people  as  soon  as  possible  I  determined 
to  proceed  tomorrow  with  a  small  party  to  the  source 
of  the  principal  stream  of  this  river  and  pass  the  moun- 
tains to  the  Columbia;  and  down  that  river  untill  I 
found  the  Indians ;  in  short  it  is  my  resolution  to  find 
them  or  some  others  who  have  horses  if  it  should  cause 
me  a  trip  of  one  month. 

"So  that  must  be  the  Rock  over  yonder. 
We're  below  the  canon,  and  below  the  Wisdom, 
and  below  the  Philanthropy,  and  below  the  end 
of  the  railroad,  and  in  the  third  valley.  Be- 
sides, look  at  it.  Just  as  sure  as  Sacagawea 
was  about  it !" 

"You're  right,"  said  Billy.  "That's  the 
Point  of  Rocks,  as  it's  called  now." 

263 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

They  made  down  to  the  edge  of  the  valley 
and  went  into  camp  across  from  the  great 
promontory  which  so  long  had  served  as  land- 
mark in  all  that  country.  That  night  all  of 
them  forded  the  river  horseback  and  rode  close 
to  the  historic  point.  Jesse,  who  was  prowling 
around  on  foot,  as  was  his  habit,  closely  ex- 
amining all  he  saw,  suddenly  stooped,  then  rose 
with  an  exclamation. 

"See  what  I've  found !"  said  he. 

"What  is  it — a  gold  nugget?"  asked  his 
uncle. 

"No.  An  arrowhead.  Funny  one — looks 
like  it  was  made  of  glass,  and  black  glass  at 
that." 

Uncle  Dick  examined  it  closely. 

"Jesse,"  said  he,  "that's  one  of  the  most 
interesting  things  we've  run  across  on  this 
whole  trip.  Did  you  know  that  ?" 

"No.    Why?" 

"You  wouldn't  think  that  arrowhead  was 
going  to  take  you  to  the  true  head  of  the  Mis- 
souri, and  to  good  fishing  for  trout  and  gray- 
ling, would  you?" 

"Why,  no!    How's  that?" 

"I'll  tell  you.  That's  an  obsidian  arrowhead. 
The  Bannacks  and  Shoshonis  got  that  black, 
glassy  stuff  at  one  place — the  Obsidian  Cliff, 

264 


JESSE  SUDDENLY  STOOPED,  THEN  ROSE  WITH  AN  EXCLAMATION 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

in  Yellowstone  Park!  Those  old  trails  that 
Lewis  saw  to  the  south  were  trails  that  crossed 
the  Divide  south  of  here.  They  put  the  Indians 
on  Snake  River  waters.  These  tribes  hunted 
down  there.  They  knew  the  head  of  the  Red 
Rock.  They  knew  the  head  of  the  Madison. 
They  knew  the  Gibbon  River,  and  they  knew 
the  Norris  Geyser  Basin,  up  in  Yellowstone 
Park.  It's  all  right  to  say  the  Indians  were 
afraid  to  go  into  Yellowstone  Park  among  the 
geysers,  but  they  did.  They  knew  the  Obsidian 
Cliff — close  by  the  road,  it  is,  and  one  of  the 
features  of  the  Park,  as  it  now  is. 

"It's  a  far  shot  that  arrow  will  carry  you, 
son.  It  will  show  you  more  of  these  Indian 
trails  than  even  Lewis  and  Clark  ever  knew. 
Of  course,  they  didn't  want  to  go  south;  they 
wanted  north  and  west,  because  they  knew  the 
latitude  and  longitude  of  the  mouth  of  the 
Columbia  River.  They  knew  that  was  north- 
west. They  knew  any  water  they  got  on,  once 
over  the  Divide,  would  run  into  the  Columbia, 
and  they  could  see  the  Rockies,  just  on  ahead 
to  the  west.  As  Billy  has  said,  the  Indian  girl 
always  was  telling  them  that  her  people  lived 
along  in  here.  An  obsidian  arrow  meant  noth- 
ing to  them.  But  it  meant  much  to  later  ex- 
plorers to  the  south  of  here." 

265 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"It's  a  good  specimen  he's  got,"  said  Billy, 
looking  it  over.  "The  Indians  liked  to  work 
obsidian;  it  would  cleave  so  sharp  and  clean. 
I  thought  they  had  them  all  picked  up,  long 
ago.  Up  in  the  Shoshoni  Cove  they  found  a 
good  many,  first  and  last.  All  this  was  their 
hunting  ground.  A  little  over  the  Divide  it 
gets  awfully  rough,  and  not  much  game/* 

They  spent  some  time  around  the  Rock,  ex- 
amining it,  finding  the  cliff  to  be  about  one 
hundred  and  fifty  feet  in  height  and  giving  a 
good  view  out  over  the  valley  plains,  over 
which  one  could  see  many  miles,  and  from 
which  the  great  rock  itself  could  be  seen  for 
great  distances. 

"Here  was  the  old  ford  of  the  road  agents' 
trail,"  said  Billy.  "They  crossed  here  and 
headed  out,  east  and  south,  for  the  hills  be- 
tween here  and  Virginia  City.  They  were 
hunting  for  easier  money  than  beaver  then, 
though — gold !  This  was  the  murderers'  high- 
way, right  by  here.  Over  a  hundred  men 
were  murdered  on  this  hundred  miles." 

They  went  back  to  their  encampment  and, 
after  their  simple  preparations  were  over  for 
the  evening,  spread  out  their  books  and  maps 
once  more,  John  endeavoring  laboriously  to  fill 
in  the  gaps  of  his  own  map ;  rather  hard  to  do, 

266 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

since  they  had  not  followed  the  actual  stream 
course  on  their  way  up  with  the  pack  train. 

"This  Wisdom  River,  now,"  said  he,  "must 
have  been  a  puzzler,  sure  enough.  That's 
called  the  Big  Hole  to-day.  I'll  bet  she  was 
a  beaver  water,  too,  as  well  as  full  of  trout. 
Wonder  if  she  had  any  grayling  in  her.  Here's 
a  town  down  below  here,  near  the  mouth  of  the 
Red  Rock,  called  Grayling." 

"Must  have  been  grayling  in  all  these  upper 
Missouri  waters,"  nodded  Billy.  "I  don't 
think  the  Journal  mentions  them,  but  they  saw 
whitefish,  and  the  two  often  go  together, 
though  by  no  means  always.  The  Madison  is  a 
grayling  stream,  or  was — the  South  Fork's 
good  now,  and  so  is  Grayling  Creek,  or  was. 
The  headwaters  of  the  Red  Rock  were  full  of 
grayling  once.  The  trouble  is,  so  many  motor 
cars  now,  that  everybody  gets  in,  and  they  soon 
fish  a  stream  out." 

"Shall  we  get  to  see  a  grayling?"  asked  Rob. 
"You  know,  we  got  the  Arctic  grayling  on  the 
Bell  River,  in  the  Arctic  regions.  They  call 
them  'bluefish'  up  there.  They're  fine." 

"So  are  these  fine.     I'd  rather  catch  one 
grayling  than  a  dozen  trout.    But  they're  get- 
ting mighty  scarce,  and  I  think  before  long 
there  won't  be  any  left, 
is  267 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"But  look  what  a  beaver  country  this  must 
have  been !"  he  added,  waving  a  hand  each  way. 
"Fifty  by  two  hundred  miles,  and  then  some. 
No  wonder  the  trappers  came.  It  wasn't  long 
before  they  and  the  Blackfeet  mixed  it,  all 
along  in  here." 

"Listen,"  said  Uncle  Dick,  "and  I'll  tell  you 
a  little  beaver  story,  right  out  of  the  Journal." 

"Aw— the  Journal!"  said  Jesse.  "I'd  rather 
catch  one!" 

"Wait  for  my  story,  and  you'll  see  how  im- 
portant a  small  thing  may  be  that  might  make 
all  the  difference  in  the  world.  Now  the  hero 
of  my  story  is  a  beaver.  I  don't  know  his 
name. 

"Look  on  your  map,  just  above  here — that's 
the  mouth  of  the  Wisdom,  or  Big  Hole,  River, 
that  Lewis  and  Drewyer  explored  first,  while 
poor  Clark,  with  his  sore  leg,  was  toiling  up 
with  his  boat  party,  after  he  was  better  of  his 
sickness. 

"Now  the  Wisdom  was  a  good-sized  river, 
too,  almost  as  big  as  the  Jefferson,  though 
broken  into  channels.  Lewis  worked  it  out 
and  came  back  to  the  Jefferson  at  its  mouth, 
and  started  on  again,  up  the  Jefferson.  As 
was  their  custom,  he  wrote  a  note  and  put  it 
in  a  cleft  stick  and  stuck  it  up  where  Clark 

268 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

could  see  it  when  he  got  up  that  far.  He  put 
it  on  a  green  stick,  poplar  or  willow,  and  stuck 
it  in  the  bar.  It  told  Clark  to  take  the  left- 
hand  stream,  not  the  one  on  the  right — the 
Wisdom. 

"Well,  along  comes  Mr.  Beaver  that  night, 
and  gnaws  off  the  pole  and  swims  away  with 
it,  note  and  all !  I  don't  know  what  his  family 
made  out  of  the  note,  but  if  he'd  been  as  wise 
as  some  of  the  magazine-story  beavers,  he 
could  have  read  it,  all  right. 

"Now  when  Clark  came  along,  tired  and 
worn  out,  all  of  them,  the  note  was  gone.  They 
also,  therefore,  went  up  the  Wisdom  and  not 
the  Jefferson.  Clark  sent  Shannon  ahead  up 
the  Wisdom  to  hunt.  But  he  turned  back  when 
the  river  got  too  shallow.  Result,  Shannon 
lost  for  three  days,  and  not  his  fault.  He  went 
away  up  till  he  found  the  boats  could  not  have 
passed ;  then  he  hustled  back  to  the  mouth  and 
guessed  the  party  were  above  him  up  the  other 
fork — where  he  guessed  right.  They  then  were 
all  on  the  Jefferson.  Lost  time,  hunting  for 
Shannon,  and  they  couldn't  find  him.  All  due 
to  the  beaver  eating  off  the  message  pole.  If 
Shannon  had  died,  it  would  have  been  due  to 
that  beaver. 

"That's  only  part.  In  the  shallow  water  a 
269 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

canoe  swept  down  out  of  control.  It  ran  over 
Whitehouse,  another  man,  on  a  bar,  and  nearly 
broke  his  leg;  it  would  have  killed  him  sure  if 
the  water  had  been  three  inches  shallower. 
That  would  have  been  another  man  lost. 

"Not  all  yet.  A  canoe  got  upset  in  the  shal- 
low water  up  there  on  the  Wisdom,  and  wet 
everything  in  it.  Result,  they  lost  so  much 
cargo — foodstuffs,  etc. — that  they  just  aban- 
doned that  canoe  right  there  and  lost  her  cargo, 
after  carrying  it  three  thousand  miles,  for  over 
a  year !  All  to  be  charged  to  the  same  beaver. 
Well,  you  and  I  have  spoken  before  about  the 
extreme  danger  of  a  land  party  and  a  boat 
party  trying  to  travel  together. 

"The  next  time  Lewis  left  a  note,  he  used  a 
dry  stick,  and  he  felt  mortified  at  not  having 
thought  to  do  that  in  the  first  place.  Well, 
that's  my  beaver  story.  It  shows  how  a  little 
thing  may  have  big  consequences — just  as  this 
arrowhead  that  Jesse  found  points  out  a  long 
trail/3 

"And  by  that  time,"  said  John,  bending  again 
over  his  map,  "they  were  needing  every  pound 
of  food  and  every  minute  of  their  time  and 
every  bit  of  every  man's  strength.  The  poor 
fellows  were  almost  worn  out.  Now  they  be- 
gan to  complain  for  the  first  time.  We  don't 

270 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

hear  any  more  now  about  dances  at  night 
around  the  camp  fire." 

"Yes,"  said  Uncle  Dick.  "Now  they  all 
were  having  their  proving.  It  would  have  been 
easy  for  them  to  turn  back;  most  men  would 
have  done  so.  But  they  never  thought  of  that. 
All  the  men  wanted  was  to  get  away  from  the 
boats  and  get  on  horseback." 

"But  they  didn't  yet  know  where  to  go !" 

"No,  not  yet.  And  now  comes  the  most 
agonizing  and  most  dramatic  time  in  the  whole 
trip,  when  it  needed  the  last  ounce  and  the  last 
inch  of  nerve.  Read  us  what  Lewis  said  in  his 
Journal,  Rob.  He  was  on  ahead,  and  every 
man  now  was  hustling,  because  there  were  the 
mountains  'right  at  them/  as  they  say  down 
South." 

Rob  complied,  turning  the  pages  of  their 
precious  book  until  he  reached  the  last  march 
of  Lewis  beyond  the  last  forks  of  the  river : 

"Near  this  place  we  fell  in  with  a  large  and  plain 
Indian  road  which  came  into  the  cove  from  the  N.E. 
and  led  along  the  foot  of  the  mountains  to  the  S.W. 
o(b)liquely  approaching  the  main  stream  which  we  had 
left  yesterday,  this  road  we  now  pursued  to  the  S.W. 
at  5  miles  it  passed  a  stout  stream  which  is  a  principal 
fork  of  the  ma(i)n  stream  and  falls  into  it  just  above 
the  narrow  pass  between  the  two  clifts  before  mentioned 
and  which  we  now  saw  before  us.  here  we  halted 
and  breakfasted  on  the  last  of  our  venison,  having  yet 

271 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

a  small  piece  of  pork  in  reserve,  after  eating  we  con- 
tinued our  rout  through  the  low  bottom  of  the  main 
stream  along  the  foot  of  the  mountains  on  our  right 
the  valley  for  5  Mis.  further  in  a  S.W.  direction  was 
from  2  to  3  miles  wide  the  main  stream  now  after  dis- 
carding two  stream(s)  on  the  left  in  this  valley  turns 
abruptly  to  the  West  through  a  narrow  bottom  be- 
twe(e)n  the  mountains,  the  road  was  still  plain,  I 
therefore  did  not  not  dispair  of  shortly  finding  a  pas- 
sage over  the  mountains  and  of  taisting  the  waters  of 
the  great  Columbia  this  evening." 

"Well,  what  do  you  think  ?  Clean  nerve,  eh  ? 
I  think  so,  and  so  do  you.  If  he  had  not  had, 
he  never  would  have  gotten  across.  And  Simon 
Fraser  then  would  have  beaten  us  to  the  mouth 
of  the  Columbia,  and  altered  the  whole  history 
of  the  West  and  Northwest.  Well,  at  least  our 
beaver,  that  carried  off  Lewis's  note,  did  not 
work  that  ruin,  but  it  might  have  been  respon- 
sible, even  for  that ;  for  now  a  missed  meeting 
with  the  Shoshonis  would  have  meant  the  fail- 
ure of  the  whole  expedition. 

"A  great  deal  more  Lewis  did  than  he  ever 
was  to  know  he  had  done.  He  died  too  soon 
even  to  know  much  about  the  swift  rush  of  the 
fur  traders  into  this  bonanza.  And  few  of 
the  fur  traders  ever  lived  to  guess  the  rush 
of  the  placer  miners  of  1862  and  1863  into  this 
same  bonanza — right  where  we  are  camping 
now,  on  the  old  Robbers'  Trail.  And  not  many 

272 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

of  the  placer  miners  and  other  early  adven- 
turers of  that  day  dreamed  of  anything  but 
gold.  The  copper  mines  of  this  country  have 
built  up  towns  and  cities,  not  merely  camps. 

"Even  had  Lewis  and  his  man  Fields,  whose 
name  he  gave  to  Boulder  Creek,  and  who  killed 
the  panther  which  gave  Panther  Creek  its  name 
— pushed  on  up  Panther  Creek,  which  now  is 
known  as  Pipestone  Creek,  and  stepped  over 
the  crest  to  where  the  city  of  Butte  is  to-day, 
they  hardly  would  have  suspected  copper. 
Lewis  set  down  the  most  minute  details  in 
botany,  even  now.  He  studied  and  described 
his  last  new  bird,  the  sage  hen,  with  much 
detail.  Yet  for  more  than  a  month  and  a  half 
he  and  his  men  had  been  wearing  out  their 
moccasins  on  gold  pebbles,  and  they  never 
panned  a  color  or  dreamed  a  dream  of  it.  It 
was  lucky  for  America  they  did  not. 

"They  found  copper  at  Butte  in  1876,  the 
year  of  the  Custer  massacre.  I  wouldn't  like 
to  say  how  much  Butte,  just  over  yonder  hills, 
has  earned  to  date,  but  in  her  first  twenty  years 
she  turned  out  over  five  hundred  million  dol- 
lars. And  twenty  years  ago  she  paid  in  one 
year  fourteen  million  dollars  in  dividends,  and 
carried  a  pay  roll  of  two  million  dollars  a 
month,  for  over  eight  thousand  miners,  and 

273 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

gave  the  world  over  fifty  million  dollars  in 
metals  in  that  one  year !  In  ten  years  she  paid 
in  dividends  alone  over  forty-three  million  dol- 
lars. In  one  year  she  sold  more  copper,  gold, 
and  silver  from  her  deep  mines  than  would 
have  paid  three  times  the  whole  price  we  paid 
for  all  the  Louisiana  that  Lewis  and  Clark 
and  you  and  I  have  been  exploring !  And  that 
doesn't  touch  the  fur  and  the  placer  gold  and 
the  other  mines  and  the  cattle  and  wool  and  the 
farm  products  and  the  lumber.  No  man  can 
measure  what  wealth  has  gone  out  from  this 
country  right  under  our  noses  here.  And  all 
because  Lewis  and  his  friend  and  their  men 
wouldn't  quit.  And  their  expense  allowance 
was  twenty-five  hundred  dollars ! 

"This  was  on  our  road  to  Mandalay,  young 
gentlemen,  right  here  through  these  gray  foot- 
hills and  green  willow  flats !  Beyond  the  hills 
was  still  all  the  wealth  of  the  Columbia,  of  the 
Pacific  Northwest  also.  This  trail  brought  us 
to  the  end  of  all  our  roads — face  to  face  with 
Asia.  Was  it  enough,  all  this,  as  the  result  of 
one  young  man's  wish  to  do  something  for  the 
world  ?  Did  he  do  it  ?  Did  he  have  his  wish  ?" 

His  answer  was  in  the  silence  with  which 
his  words  were  received.  Our  young  adven- 
turers, though  they  had  been  used  to  stirring 

274 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

scenes  all  their  lives,  had  never  yet  been  in  any 
country  which  gave  them  the  thrill  they  got 
here,  under  the  Beaverhead  Rock. 

"She's  one  wonderful  river!"  said  Billy 
Williams,  after  a  time.  "And  those  two  scouts 
were  two  wonderful  men!" 


T 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE  JUMP-OFF  CAMP 

WO  days  later,  on  August  4th,  the  travel- 
ers had  pushed  on  up  the  valley  of  the 
Missouri,  to  what  was  known  as  the  Two 
Forks,  between  the  towns  of  Grayling  and  Red 
Rock.  They  pitched  their  last  camp,  as  nearly 
as  they  could  determine,  precisely  where  the 
Lewis  and  Clark  party  made  their  last  en- 
campment east  of  the  Rockies,  at  what  they 
called  the  Shoshoni  Cove.  This  the  boys  called 
the  Jump-off  Camp,  because  this  was  where  the 
expedition  left  its  boats,  and,  ill  fed  and  worn 
out,  started  on  across  the  Divide  for  the  begin- 
ning of  their  great  journey  into  the  Pacific 
Northwest. 

Now  they  were  under  the  very  shoulders  of 
the  Rockies,  and,  so  closely  had  they  followed 
the  narrative  of  the  first  exploration  of  the 
great  river,  and  so  closely  had  their  own  jour- 
ney been  identified  with  it,  that  now  they  were 
almost  as  eager  and  excited  over  the  last  stages 
of  the  journey  to  the  summit  as  though  it  lay 
before  them  personally,  new,  unknown  and  un- 

276 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

tried.  They  hardly  could  wait  to  resume  their 
following  out  of  the  last  entangled  skein  of  the 
great  narrative. 

"We've  caught  them  at  last,  Uncle  Dick!" 
exclaimed  Jesse,  spreading  out  his  map  on  top 
of  one  of  the  kyacks  in  which  Nigger  had  car- 
ried his  load  of  kitchen  stuff.  "We've  got 
almost  a  week  the  start  of  them  here.  This  is 
August  4th,  and  it  was  August  10th  when 
Lewis  got  here." 

"And  by  that  time  he'd  been  everywhere 
else !"  said  Rob.  "Let's  figure  him  out — tying 
him  up  with  that  note  the  beaver  carried 
off.  That  beaver  certainly  made  a  lot  of 
trouble. 

"Lewis  left  the  note  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Wisdom  on  August  4th.  On  August  5th  Clark 
got  there  and  went  up  the  Wisdom.  On  August 
6th,  7th,  8th  and  9th,  Shannon  was  lost  up  the 
Wisdom.  On  August  6th,  Drewyer  met  Clark 
coming  up  the  Wisdom  River  and  turned  him 
back ;  and  Clark  sent  Field  up  the  Wisdom  after 
Shannon.  Meantime  Lewis  had  gone  down  to 
the  junction  at  the  Wisdom,  not  meeting  the 
boats  above  the  junction.  He  met  Clark,  com- 
ing back  down  the  Wisdom  with  the  boats. 
They  then  all  went  down  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Wisdom  and  camped — that's  about  a  day's 

277 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

march  below  where  we  camped,  at  the  Beaver- 
head  Rock. 

"Then  Lewis  saw  something  had  to  be  done. 
He  told  Clark  to  bring  on  the  boats  as  fast  as 
he  could.  He  then  made  up  a  fast-marching 
party — himself,  Drewyer,  Shields,  and  McNeal 
— with  packs  of  food  and  Indian  trading  stuff ; 
he  didn't  forget  that  part — and  they  four  hit 
the  trail  in  the  high  places  only,  still  hunting 
for  those  Indians  they'd  been  trying  to  find 
ever  since  they  left  the  Great  Falls.  They  were 
walkers,  that  bunch,  for  they  left  the  Wisdom 
early  August  9th,  and  they  got  here  late  on 
August  10th.  That  was  going  some!" 

"Yes,  but  poor  Clark  didn't  get  up  here  to 
where  we  are  now  until  August  17th,  a  whole 
week  later  than  Lewis.  And  by  that  time 
Lewis  had  come  back  down  to  this  place  where 
we  are  right  now,  and  he  was  mighty  glad  to 
meet  Clark.  If  he  hadn't,  he'd  have  lost  his 
Indians.  You  tell  it  now,  Billy!"  concluded 
Jesse,  breathless. 

"You  mean,  after  Captain  Lewis  started 
west  from  here  to  cross  the  summit?" 

"Yes." 

"All  right.  You  can  see  why  he  went  up  this 
upper  creek — it  was  the  one  that  led  straight 
to  the  top.  The  Red  Rock  River,  as  they  now 

278 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

call  the  stream  below  what  they  call  the  Beaver- 
head  River — it's  all  one  stream — bends  off 
sharp  south.  The  Horse  Prairie  Creek  takes 
you  straight  up  to  Lemhi  Pass,  which  ought  to 
be  called  the  Lewis  Pass,  but  isn't,  though  he 
was  the  first  across  it.  Lewis  was  glad  when 
he  got  to  what  they  called  the  source,  the  next 
day  after  that. 

"Now,  he  didn't  find  any  Indians  right  away. 
I  allow  he'd  followed  an  Indian  road  toward 
that  pass,  but  the  tracks  faded  out.  He  knew 
he  was  due  to  hit  Columbia  waters  now,  beyond 
yon  range,  but  what  he  wanted  was  Indians, 
so  he  kept  on. 

"Now  all  at  once — I  think  it  was  August 
llth,  the  same  day  he  left  camp  here — about 
five  miles  up  this  creek,  he  saw  an  Indian,  on 
horseback,  two  miles  off!  That  was  the  first 
Indian  they  had  seen  since  they  left  the  Man- 
dans  the  spring  before.  But  Mr.  Indian  pulled 
his  freight.  That  was  when  Lewis  was  'soarly 
chagrined'  with  Shields,  who  had  not  stayed 
back  till  Lewis  got  his  Indian  gentled  down 
some ;  he  had  him  inside  of  one  hundred  yards 
at  one  time.  He  'abraided'  Shields  for  that; 
he  says. 

"But  now,  anyhow,  they  knew  there  was 
such  a  thing  as  an  Indian,  so  they  trailed  this 

279 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

one,  but  they  couldn't  catch  him,  and  Lewis  was 
scared  he'd  run  all  the  other  Indians  back  West. 
But  on  the  next  morning  he  ran  into  a  big 
Indian  road,  that  ran  up  toward  the  pass. 
There  was  a  lowish  mountain,  running  back 
about  a  half  mile.  The  creek  came  out  of  the 

foot  of  that  mountain " 

"I  know,"  interrupted  John,  who  had  his 
Journal  spread  before  him.  "Here's  what  he 
said: 

"At  the  distance  of  4  miles  further  the  road  took  us 
to  the  most  distant  fountain  of  the  waters  of  the  Mighty 
Missouri  in  surch  of  which  we  have  spent  so  many 
toilsome  days  and  wristless  nights,  thus  far  I  had 
accomplished  one  of  those  great  objects  on  which  my 
mind  has  been  unalterably  fixed  for  many  years,  judge 
then  of  the  pleasure  I  felt  in  all(a)ying  my  thirst  with 
this  pure  and  ice-cold  water  which  issues  from  the  base 
of  a  low  mountain  or  hill  of  a  gentle  ascent  for  y2  a 
mile,  the  mountains  are  high  on  either  hand  leave  this 
gap  at  the  head  of  this  rivulet  through  which  the  road 
passes." 

"Go  on,  Billy,"  said  Uncle  Dick.  "That's  all 
he  says  about  actually  crossing  the  Divide  at 
Lemhi  Pass!  Tell  us  where  they  found  the 
village." 

"Well,  sir,  that  was  beyond  the  Lemhi  Pass, 
up  in  there,  thirty  miles  from  here,  about. 
They'd  been  traveling,  all  right.  Now  that  was 
August  12th,  and  on  August  13th  they  were 

280 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

over,  and  had  their  first  drink  of  'chaste  and 
icy  water  out  a  Columbia  river  head  spring/ 
And  all  the  while,  back  of  us,  poor  old  Clark 
and  his  men  were  dragging  the  boats  up  the 
chaste  and  icy  waters  of  the  Jefferson. 

"Now  that  day  they  got  into  rough  country, 
other  side;  but  they  didn't  care,  because  that 
day  they  saw  two  women  and  a  man.  They 
run  off,  too,  and  Lewis  was  'soar'  again;  but 
all  at  once  they  ran  plumb  into  three  more — one 
an  old  woman,  one  a  young  woman,  and  one  a 
kid.  The  young  woman  runs  off.  Now  you 
ought  to  seen  Cap.  Lewis  make  friends  with 
them  people. 

"He  gives  them  some  beads  and  awls  and 
some  paint.  Drewyer  don't  know  their  lan- 
guage, but  he  talks  sign  talk.  He  gets  the  old 
girl  to  call  the  young  woman  back.  She  comes 
back.  Lewis  gives  her  some  things,  too.  He 
paints  up  their  cheeks  with  the  vermilion  paint. 
From  that  time  he  had  those  womenfolks, 
young  and  old,  feeding  from  the  hand. 

"So  now  they  all  start  out  for  the  village, 
which  Lewis  knew  was  not  far  away.  Sure 
enough,  they  meet  about  sixty  braves  riding 
down  the  trail;  and  I  reckon  if  Meriwether 
Lewis  ever  felt  like  stealing  horses,  it  was 
then. 

281 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"Now  the  women  showed  their  paint  and 
awls  and  things.  Lewis  pulls  up  his  shirt 
sleeve  and  shows  his  white  skin.  The  chief 
gets  down  and  hugs  him,  though  that  was  the 
first  white  man  they'd  ever  met  in  their  lives. 
Then  they  had  a  smoke,  like  long-lost  brothers. 
Then  they  went  back  to  the  Indian  camp,  four 
miles.  Then  Lewis  allows  something  to  eat 
would  go  fine,  but  old  Cameahwait,  the  head 
man,  hands  him  a  few  berries  and  choke  cher- 
ries, which  was  all  they  had  to  eat.  You  see, 
this  band  was  working  east  now,  in  the  fall, 
to  better  hunting  range — they  had  only  bows 
and  arrows. 

"Lewis  sends  Drewyer  and  Shields  out  to 
kill  some  meat.  The  old  chief  makes  a  sand 
map  for  Lewis,  but  says  he  can't  get  through, 
that  way — meaning  down  the  Salmon  River, 
west  of  the  Divide.  Anyhow,  they'd  have  no 
boats,  for  the  timber  was  no  good.  So  horses 
begin  to  look  still  better  to  Lewis. 

"They  had  a  good  party,  but  nothing  to  eat, 
and  the  Indians  were  scared  when  he  got  them 
to  know  there  were  more  white  men  back  of 
him,  on  the  east  side  the  hill.  He  couldn't  talk, 
so  he  told  it  in  beads,  and  jockeyed  along  till  he 
got  a  half  dozen  to  start  back  with  him.  So  on 
August  16th  he  got  back  to  this  place  here 

282 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

again,  east  of  the  summit,  right  where  we're 
camped  now,  and  he  had  plenty  Indians  now — 
and  nothing  to  feed  them. 

"But  he  waited  to  find  Clark,  and  he  didn't 
know  how  far  downstream  Clark  was,  and  he 
was  afraid  he'd  lose  his  Indians  any  minute. 
So  he  writes  a  note  to  Clark,  and  gives  it  to 
his  best  man,  Drewyer,  to  carry  downstream 
fast  as  he  can  go.  Lewis  had  promised  to  trade 
goods  for  horses,  but  the  Shoshonis  didn't  see 
any  boats,  and  so  they  got  suspicious. 

"Well,  it  was  night.  Lewis  had  the  head 
man  and  about  a  couple  of  dozen  others  in 
camp.  He  was  plumb  anxious.  But  next  day, 
the  17th,  he  tells  Drewyer  to  hot- foot  down  the 
river,  with  an  Indian  or  two  along  with  him. 
About  two  hours,  an  Indian  came  back  and 
said  that  Lewis  had  told  the  truth,  for  he  had 
seen  boats  on  the  river. 

"Now  between  seven  and  eight  o'clock  that 
morning,  Clark  and  Chaboneau  and  the  Indian 
girl,  Sacagawea,  all  were  walking  on  ahead  of 
the  boats,  the  girl  a  little  ahead.  All  at  once  she 
begins  to  holler.  They  look  up,  and  here  comes 
several  Indians  and  Drewyer  with  the  note 
from  Lewis.  There's  nothing  to  it,  after  that." 

"Go  on,  Uncle  Dick;  you  tell  it  now!"  de- 
manded Jesse,  all  excited. 
19  283 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"You  mean  about  Sacagawea  ?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"It  sounds  like  a  border  romance — and  it 
was  a  border  romance,  literally. 

"Here,  on  the  river  where  she  used  to  live, 
a  young  Indian  woman  ran  out  of  the  crowd 
and  threw  her  arms  around  Sacagawea.  It 
was  the  girl  who  had  been  captured  with  her 
at  the  Three  Forks,  six  years  or  more  ago,  by 
the  Minnetarees!  They  had  been  slaves  to- 
gether. This  other  girl  had  escaped  and  got 
back  home,  by  what  miracle  none  of  us  ever 
will  know. 

"But  now,  when  Sacagawea  had  told  her 
people  how  good  the  white  men  were,  there  was 
no  longer  any  question  of  the  friendship  all 
around.  As  Billy  expresses  it,  there  was  noth- 
ing to  it,  after  that. 

"You'd  think  that  was  asking  us  to  believe 
enough  ?  But  no.  The  girl  rushes  up  to  Came- 
ahwait,  the  chief,  and  puts  her  arms  around 
him,  too.  He's  her  brother,  that's  all! 

"Well,  this  seemed  to  give  them  the  entree 
into  the  best  Shoshoni  circles.  Beyond  this  it 
was  a  question  of  details.  Lewis  stayed  here 
till  August  24th,  trading  for  horses  for  all  he 
was  worth.  He  got  five,  for  five  or  six  dollars 
each  in  goods.  They  cached  what  goods  they 

284 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

could  spare  or  could  not  take,  hid  their  canoes, 
and  on  August  24th  bade  the  old  Missouri 
good-by — for  that  year  at  least. 

"They  now  went  over  west  of  the  Divide, 
to  the  main  village,  to  trade  for  more  horses. 
They  cut  up  their  oars  and  broke  up  their  re- 
maining boxes  and  made  pack  saddles  to  carry 
their  goods. 

"Meantime,  Clark  and  eleven  men,  all  the 
good  carpenters,  had  started  on  August  18th 
to  cross  the  Divide  and  explore  down  for  a 
route  on  the  stream  which  we  now  know  took 
them  to  the  Salmon  River.  They  traveled  two 
days,  to  the  Indian  camp.  Now  the  Journal 
takes  page  after  page,  describing  these  Indians. 

"Now  it  was  Clark's  turn  to  go  ahead  and 
find  a  way  by  horse  or  boat  down  to  the  Colum- 
bia. His  notes  tell  of  his  troubles : 

"August  20th  Tuesday  1805  "So-So-ne"  the  Snake 
Indians  Set  out  at  half  past  6  oClock  and  proceeded  on 
(met  many  parties  of  Indians)  thro*  a  hilley  Countrey  to 
the  Camp  of  the  Indians  on  a  branch  of  the  Columbia 
River,  before  we  entered  this  Camp  a  Serimonious  hault 
was  requested  by  the  Chief  and  I  smoked  with  all  that 
Came  around,  for  Several  pipes,  we  then  proceeded 
on  to  the  Camp  &  I  was  introduced  into  the  only  Lodge 
they  had  which  was  pitched  in  the  Center  for  my  party 
all  the  other  Lodges  made  of  bushes,  after  a  fiew  Indian 
Seremonies  I  informed  the  Indians  (of)  the  object  of 
our  journey  our  good  intentions  toward  them  my  Con- 

285 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

sirn  for  their  distressed  Situation,  what  we  had  done 
for  them  in  makeing  a  piece  with  the  Minitarras  Man- 
dans  Rickara  &c.  for  them,  and  requested  them  all  to 
take  over  their  horses  &  assist  Capt  Lewis  across  &c. 
also  informing  them  the  o(b)ject  of  my  journey  down 
the  river,  and  requested  a  guide  to  accompany  me, 
all  of  which  was  repeited  by  the  Chief  to  the  whole 
village. 

"Those  pore  people  Could  only  raise  a  Sammon  &  a 
little  dried  Choke  Cherries  for  us  half  the  men  of  the 
tribe  with  the  Chief  turned  out  to  hunt  the  antilopes, 
at  3  oClock  after  giveing  a  new  Small  articles  as  pres- 
ents I  set  out  accompanied  by  an  old  man  as  a  Guide 
I  endevered  to  procure  as  much  information  from  thos 
people  as  possible  without  much  Suckcess  they  being 
but  little  acquainted  or  effecting  to  be  So.  I  left  one 
man  to  purchase  a  horse  and  overtake  me  and  proceeded 
on  thro  a  wide  rich  bottom  on  a  beaten  Roade  8  miles 
Crossed  the  river  and  encamped  on  a  Small  run,  this 
evening  passed  a  number  of  old  lodges,  and  met  a  num- 
ber of  men  women  children  &  horses,  met  a  man  who 
appeared  of  Some  Consideration  who  turned  back  with 
us,  we  halted  a  woman  &  gave  us  3  Small  Sammon, 
this  man  continued  with  me  all  night  and  partook  of 
what  I  had  which  was  a  little  Pork  verry  Salt.  Those 
Indians  are  verry  attentive  to  Strangers  &c.  I  left  our 
interpreter  &  his  woman  to  accompany  the  Indians  to 
Capt  Lewis  to-morrow  the  Day  they  informed  me  they 
would  Set  out  I  killed  a  Pheasent  at  the  Indian  Camp 
larger  than  a  dungal  (dunghill)  fowl  with  f(l)eshey 
protubrances  about  the  head  like  a  turkey.  Frost  last 
night. 

"Clark  got  more  and  more  discouraging 
news  about  getting  down  the  Lemhi  River,  on 
which  they  were  camped,  and  the  big  river 

286 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

below — the  Salmon  River.  But  with  the  old 
man  for  guide,  he  went  about  seventy  miles, 
into  the  gorge  of  the  Salmon  River,  before  he 
would  quit.  But  he  found  that  no  man  could 
get  down  that  torrent,  with  either  boat  or  pack 
train.  He  gave  it  up.  They  were  nearly 
starved  when  they  got  back  at  the  Indian  camp, 
where  Lewis  and  the  other  men  were  trading. 
Sacagawea  had  kept  all  her  people  from  going 
on  east  to  the  buffalo  country,  though  now  they 
none  of  them  had  anything  to  eat  but  a  few 
berries  and  choke  cherries.  If  the  Indians  had 
left,  or  if  they  had  been  missed  by  the  party, 
the  expedition  would  have  ended  there.  The 
Indian  girl  once  more  had  saved  the  Northwest 
for  America,  very  likely. 

"Now  the  old  Indian  guide  said  he  knew  a 
way  across,  away  to  the  north.  They  hired 
him  as  guide.  They  traded  for  twenty-nine 
horses,  and  at  last  packed  them  and  set  out 
for  the  hardest  part  of  their  journey  and  the 
riskiest,  though  they  did  not  know  that  then. 
On  August  30th  they  set  out.  At  the  same  time 
Cameahwait  and  his  band  set  off  east,  after 
their  fall  hunt. 

"That  was  the  last  that  Sacagawea  ever  saw 
of  her  brother  or  her  girl  friend.  She  went  on 
with  her  white  husband,  into  strange  tribes — 

287 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

nothing  further  for  her  to  look  forward  to  now, 
for  she  was  leaving  home  for  another  thousand 
miles,  in  the  opposite  direction. 

"And  that  ended  the  long,  hard,  risky  time 
the  company  of  Volunteers  for  Discovery  of 
the  Northwest  had  in  crossing  the  Continental 
Divide.  We  lie  at  the  foot  of  their  pass. 
Yonder  they  headed  out  for  the  setting  sun!" 

"Let's  go  on  after  them,  Uncle  Dick!"  ex- 
claimed Jesse.  "We've  got  a  good  outfit,  and 
we're  not  afraid !" 

"I've  been  expecting  that,"  rejoined  their 
leader.  "I  was  afraid  you'd  want  to  go 
through !  But  we  can't  do  it,  fellows,  not  this 
year  at  least.  There's  the  school  term  we've 
got  to  think  of.  We're  nearly  three  thousand 
miles  from  St.  Louis.  That  means  we'll  have 
to  choose  between  two  or  three  weeks  of  the 
hardest  kind  of  mountain  work  and  back  out 
when  we've  got  nowhere,  and  taking  a  fast  and 
simple  trip  to  the  true  head  of  the  Missouri. 
Which  would  you  rather  do?" 

"We  don't  like  to  turn  back,"  said  Rob. 

"Well,  it  wouldn't  be  turning  back,  really. 
It  would  be  going  to  the  real  head  of  the  Mis- 
souri— and  neither  Lewis  nor  Clark  ever  did 
that,  or  very  many  other  men."  Billy  spoke 
quietly. 

288 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"But  don't  think,"  he  added,  "that  I'm  not 
game  to  go  on  into  the  Bitter  Roots,  if  you  say 
so.  I'm  promising  you  she's  rough,  up  in  there. 
The  trail  they  took  was  a  fright,  and  I  don't 
see  how  they  made  it.  It  ran  to  where  this 
range  angles  into  the  corner  of  the  Bitter  Roots, 
and  crossed  there.  They  crossed  another  pass, 
too,  and  that  makes  three  passes,  from  here. 
They  got  here  July  10th,  and  three  days  later  at 
last  they  hit  the  Lolo  Creek  trail,  over  the  Lolo 
Pass — the  way  old  Chief  Joseph  came  east 
when  he  went  on  the  war  trail ;  he  fought  Gib- 
bon in  the  battle  of  the  Big  Hole,  above  here." 

Rob  sighed.  "Well,  it  only  took  Lewis  and 
Clark  a  couple  of  months  to  get  through.  But 
still,  we've  only  got  a  couple  of  weeks. 

"What  do  you  say,  John  ?  Shall  we  go  south 
to  the  head  with  Billy?"  Uncle  Dick  did  not 
decide  it  alone. 

"Vote  yes,  in  the  circumstances,"  said  John. 
"Hate  to  quit  her,  though !" 

"You,  Jess?" 

"Oh,  all  right,  I'll  haul  off  if  the  rest  do. 
We'll  get  to  fish  some,  won't  we?" 

"All  you  want.  The  best  trout  and  grayling 
fishing  there  is  left  anywhere." 

"It's  a  vote,  Uncle  Dick!"  said  Rob.  "This 
is  our  head  camp  on  this  leg  of  the  trip." 

289 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"I  think  that's  wise,"  said  Uncle  Dick. 

"But  before  we  leave  here  I  want  you  to  have 
a  last  look  at  the  map/' 

They  spread  it  open  in  the  firelight. 

"This  point  is  where  Clark  came  and  got 
the  canoes  the  next  year,  1806.  They  came 
back  over  the  Lolo,  but  took  a  short  cut,  east 
of  this  mountain  range,  forty  miles  east  of  the 
other  trail.  They  came  over  the  Gibbon  Pass 
— which  ought  to  be  called  Clark's  Pass  and 
isn't — and  headed  southeast,  the  Indian  girl 
being  of  use  again  now.  They  came  down 
Grasshopper  Creek,  walking  over  millions  of 
dollars  of  gold  gravel,  and  found  their  canoes, 
not  over  a  few  hundred  yards  from  where  we 
sit,  like  enough. 

"Then  Clark  and  his  men  got  in  the  boats 
and  headed  home.  Sacagawea  showed  them 
the  trail  up  the  Gallatin,  over  the  Bozeman 
Pass,  to  the  Yellowstone.  And  they  went  down 
that  to  its  mouth. 

"And  now,  one  last  touch  to  show  what 
nerve  those  captains  really  had.  Either  could 
cut  loose. 

"Near  what  is  now  Missoula,  on  the  Bitter 
Root — which  Lewis  called  Clark's  Fork,  after 
Clark,  just  as  Clark  named  his  Salmon  River 
tributary  after  Lewis — Lewis  took  ten  men 

290 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

and  headed  across  lots  for  the  Great  Falls  and 
then  for  the  head  of  the  Marias  River ! 

"Surely,  they  began  to  scatter.  Clark  had 
left  twenty  men,  the  Indian  girl  and  her  baby, 
and  they  had  fifty  horses.  At  this  place  here, 
where  we  are  in  camp,  Clark  split  his  party 
again,  some  going  down  in  the  boats,  some  on 
horseback,  but  all  traveling  free  and  happy. 
They  got  here  July  10th,  and  three  days  later 
were  at  the  Three  Forks,  both  parties,  'only  one 
hour  apart !  They  certainly  had  good  luck  in 
getting  together. 

"On  that  same  day,  Sergeant  Ordway  took 
six  boats  and  nine  men  and  started  down  the 
Missouri  to  meet  Lewis  at  the  Great  Falls,  or 
the  mouth  of  the  Marias.  They  made  it  down 
all  right,  and  that  is  all  we  can  say,  for  no 
record  exists  of  that  run  downstream. 

"Now,  get  all  this  straight  in  your  heads  and 
see  how  they  had  scattered,  in  that  wild,  un- 
known country,  part  in  boats,  part  on  shore — 
the  riskiest  way  to  travel.  All  the  sergeants 
are  captains  now.  We  have  four  different 
companies. 

"Gass  is  at  the  Great  Falls,  where  Lewis 
split  his  party.  Ordway  is  on  his  way  down 
the  river  from  the  Three  Forks  to  the  Falls. 
Clark  is  with  the  horses  now,  headed  east  for 

291 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

the  Yellowstone — which  not  a  soul  in  that  party 
knew  a  thing  about,  except  the  Indian  girl, 
who  insisted  they  would  come  out  on  the  Yel- 
lowstone. And  on  that  river  the  Clark  party 
divided  once  more,  part  going  in  boats  and 
part  on  horseback ! 

"Now  figure  five  parties  out  of  thirty-one 
men.  Look  at  your  map,  remembering  that 
the  two  land  parties  were  in  country  they  had 
never  seen  before.  Yet  they  plan  to  meet  at 
the  mouth  of  the  Yellowstone,  over  twelve  hun- 
dred miles  from  where  we  are  sitting  here! 
That's  traveling!  That's  exploring!  And 
their  story  of  it  all  is  as  plain  and  simple  and 
modest  as  though  children  had  done  it.  There's 
nothing  like  it  in  all  the  world." 

He  ceased  to  speak.  The  little  circle  fell 
silent. 

"Go  on,  go  on,  Uncle  Dick!"  urged  Jess. 
"You've  not  allowed  us  to  read  ahead  that  far. 
You  said  you'd  rather  we  wouldn't.  Tell  us, 


now." 


"No.  Fold  up  your  maps  and  close  your 
journals  for  a  while,  here  at  our  last  camp  on 
the  greatest  trail  a  river  ever  laid. 

"We're  going  fishing  now,  fellows — to-mor- 
row we  start  east,  gaining  two  years  on  Lewis 
and  Clark.  When  we  get  down  near  the  Yel- 

292 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

lowstone  and  Great  Falls  country  again,  going 
east  ourselves,  we'll  just  finish  up  the  story  of 
the  map  till  we  reach  the  Mandans — which  is 
where  we  left  our  own  good  ship  Adventurer. 

"To-morrow  we  head  south,  the  other  way. 
'This  story  is  to  be  continued  in  our  next/  as 
the  story  papers  say. 

"Good  night.  Keep  all  this  in  your  heads. 
It  is  a  great  story  of  great  men  in  a  great 
valley,  doing  the  first  exploring  of  the  greatest 
country  in  the  world — the  land  that  is  drained 
by  the  Missouri  and  its  streams !" 

"Good  luck,  old  tops !"  he  added,  as  he  rose 
and  stepped  to  the  edge  of  the  circle  of  light, 
waving  his  hand  to  the  Divide  above  them.  He 
stood  looking  toward  the  west. 

"Whom  are  you  speaking  to,  Uncle  Dick?" 
asked  John,  as  he  heard  no  answer. 

"I  was  just  speaking  to  my  friends,  Captain 
Meriwether  Lewis  and  Captain  William  Clark. 
Didn't  you  see  them  pass  our  camp  just  now?" 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

THE  UTMOST  SOURCE 

THE  Young  Alaskans,  who  had  followed 
faithfully  the  travels  of  Lewis  and  Clark 
from  the  mouth  of  the  Missouri  to  the  Con- 
tinental Divide,  now  felt  exultation  that  they 
had  finished  their  book  work  so  soon.  But  they 
felt  also  a  greater  interest  in  the  thought  that 
they  now  might  follow  out  a  part  of  the  great 
waterway  which  not  even  Lewis  and  Clark 
ever  had  seen.  They  were  all  eagerness  to  be 
off.  The  question  was,  what  would  be  the 
best  route  and  what  would  be  the  transpor- 
tation ? 

"We  still  can  spare  a  month  in  the  West," 
said  Uncle  Dick,  "and  get  back  to  St.  Louis  in 
time  to  catch  the  fall  school  term.  That  will 
give  us  time  for  a  little  sport.  How  shall  we 
get  down  south,  two  hundred  miles,  and  back 
to  the  Three  Forks  ?  What  do  you  say,  Billy  ?" 

"Well,  sir/'  answered  the  young  ranchman, 
"we've  got  more  help  than  Lewis  and  Clark 
had.  We  can  use  the  telegraph,  the  telephone, 
the  railway  cars,  and  the  motor  car — besides 

294 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

old  Sleepy  and  Nigger  and  the  riding  horses. 
We  can  get  about  anywhere  you  like,  in  as 
much  or  little  time  as  you  like.  If  you  leave  it 
to  me,  I'd  say,  get  a  man  at  Dillon  or  Grayling 
— I've  friends  in  both  towns — to  take  the  pack 
train  back  to  my  ranch  on  the  Gallatin " 

"But  we  don't  want  to  say  good-by  to 
Sleepy!"  broke  in  Jesse.  "He's  a  lot  of  fun." 

"Well,  don't  say  good-by  to  him — we'll  see 
him  when  we  come  north  again,  and  maybe  we'll 
all  go  in  the  mountains  together  again,  some 
other  year. 

"But  now,  to  save  time  and  skip  over  a  lot 
of  irrigated  farm  country,  how  would  it  do  to 
take  the  O.S.L.  Railway  train,  down  at  the  Red 
Rock,  and  fly  south,  say  to  Monida  on  the  line 
between  Montana  and  Idaho?  That's  right 
down  the  valley  of  the  Red  Rock  River,  which 
is  our  real  Missouri  source. 

"Now,  at  Monida  we  can  get  a  motor  car 
to  take  us  east  across  the  Centennial  Valley  and 
the  Alaska  Basin " 

"That's  good— Alaska!"  said  Rob. 

"Yes  ?  Well,  all  that  country  is  flat  and  hard 
and  the  motor  roads  are  perfect,  so  we  could 
get  over  the  country  fast— do  that  two  hundred 
miles  by  rail  and  car  a  lot  faster  than  old 
Sleepy  would. 

295 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"Now,  we  can  go  by  motor  car  from  Monida 
right  to  the  mouth  of  Hell  Roaring  Canon,  at 
the  foot  of  Mount  Jefferson,  and  up  in  there, 
at  the  head  of  that  canon,  there  is  a  wide  hole 
in  the  top  of  the  mountains,  where  the  creek 
heads  that  everybody  now  calls  Hell  Roaring 
Creek.  J.  V.  B  rower  went  up  in  there  with  a 
rancher  named  Culver,  who  lived  at  the  head 
of  Picnic  Creek,  at  the  corner  of  the  Alaska 
Basin,  and  B  rower  wrote  a  book  about  it.1  He 
called  that  canon  Culver  Canon,  but  the  name 
does  not  seem  to  have  stuck.  Now,  Culver's 
widow,  the  same  Lilian  Hackett  Culver  whose 
picture  Brower  prints  as  the  first  woman  to  see 
the  utmost  source  of  the  Missouri,  still  lives 
on  her  old  homestead,  where  a  full-sized  river 
bursts  out  from  a  great  spring,  right  at  the 
foot  of  a  rocky  ridge.  She's  owner  of  the  river 
a  couple  of  miles,  I  guess,  down  to  the  second 
dam. 

"She  stocked  that  water,  years  ago,  every 
kind  of  trout  she  could  get — native  cutthroat, 
rainbow,  Dolly  Varden,  Eastern  brook,  steel- 
heads,  and  I  don't  know  what  all,  including 
grayling — and  she  has  made  a  living  by  selling 
the  fishing  rights  there  to  anglers  who  stop  at 
her  house.  I've  been  there  many  times. 

1  The  Missouri  and  Its  Utmost  Source,  J.  V.  Brower,  1896. 
296 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"I've  fished  a  lot  everywhere,  but  that  is  the 
most  wonderful  trout  water  in  all  the  world, 
in  my  belief.  I've  seen  grayling  there  up  to 
three  pounds,  and  have  taken  many  a  rain- 
bow over  eight  pounds;  one  was  killed  there 
that  went  twelve  and  one-half  pounds.  I've 
caught  lots  of  steelheads  there  of  six  and  seven 
pounds,  and  'Dollies'  as  big,  and  natives  up  to 
ten  pounds — there  is  no  place  in  the  West 
where  all  these  species  get  such  weights. 

"They  call  the  place  now  'Lil  Culver's  ranch.' 
She  is  held  in  a  good  deal  of  affection  by  the 
sportsmen  who  have  come  there  from  all  over 
the  country.  She  is  now  a  little  bit  of  an  old 
lady,  sprightly  as  a  cricket,  and  very  bright 
and  well  educated.  She  was  from  New  Eng- 
land, once,  and  came  away  out  here.  She's  a 
fine  botanist  and  she  used  to  have  books  and  a 
lot  of  things.  Lives  there  all  alone  in  a  little 
three-room  log  house  right  by  the  big  spring. 
And  she's  the  first  woman  to  see  the  head  of 
the  Missouri.  Her  husband  was  the  first  man. 
That  looks  sort  of  like  headquarters,  doesn't 
it?" 

"It  certainly  does!"  said  Rob.  "Let's  head 
in  there.  What  do  you  say,  Uncle  Dick?" 

"It  looks  all  right  to  me,"  said  Uncle  Dick. 
"That's  right  on  our  way,  and  it's  close,  his- 

297 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

torically  and  topographically,  to  the  utmost 
source.  You  surely  have  a  good  head,  Billy, 
and  you  surely  do  know  all  this  country  of  the 
Big  Bend." 

"I  ought  to,"  said  Billy.  "Well,  then  sup- 
pose we  call  that  a  go?  We  can  fish  on  the 
spring  creek,  and  live  at  Lil  Culver's  place; 
you  can  drive  right  there  with  a  car.  Then  the 
mail  road  runs  right  on  east,  past  the  foot  of 
Jefferson  Mountain  and  over  the  Red  Rock 
Pass — Centennial  Pass,  some  call  it — to 
Henry's  Lake.  All  the  fishing  you  want  over 
there — the  easiest  in  the  world — but  only  one 
kind  of  trout — natives — and  they  taste  muddy 
now,  at  low  water.  Too  easy  for  fun,  you'll  say. 

"But  at  the  head  of  Henry's  Lake  is  a  ranch 
house,  what  they  call  a  'dude  place.'  I  know 
the  owner  well;  he's  right  on  the  motor  road 
from  Salt  Lake  to  Helena  and  Butte,  and  just 
above  the  road  that  crosses  the  Targhee  Pass, 
east  of  Henry's  Lake,  to  the  Yellowstone  Park. 

"Now,  Henry's  Lake  was  named  after  An- 
drew Henry,  who  was  chased  south  from  the 
Three  Forks  by  the  Blackfeet.  Just  north  of 
there  is  the  low  divide  called  Raynold's  Pass, 
after  Captain  Raynolds,  a  government  ex- 
plorer, about  1872.  Suppose  we  kept  our  Mon- 
ida  car  that  far,  and  then  sent  it  back  home? 

298 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

Then  I  could  telegraph  my  folks  to  send  my 
own  car  down  there  from  my  ranch,  to  meet 
us  there  at  the  head  of  Henry's  Lake,  say  one 
week  from  now ;  that'll  give  us  time  to  run  the 
river  up,  easy. 

"Then  we'd  have  my  car  to  run  across 
Targhee,  to  the  South  Fork  of  the  Madison — 
another  source  of  the  Missouri — and  try  out 
the  grayling.  We  are  now  on  the  only  gray- 
ling waters  left  in  the  West.  All  the  heads  of 
the  Missouri  used  to  have  them.  I  thought  you 
all  might  like  to  have  a  go  at  that.  I  can  prom- 
ise you  good  sport.  We  can  have  a  tent  and 
cook  outfit  brought  down  on  my  car  from  the 
ranch." 

"Well,  that  looks  like  a  time  saver,  sure," 
said  John.  "We  finish  things  faster  than  Lewis 
and  Clark,  don't  we?" 

"Sure.  Well,  when  you  feel  you  have  to 
start  back  east  we  can  jump  in  the  car  and  run 
back  up  north  to  my  ranch,  up  the  Gallatin. 
You  can  follow  Sleepy  over  to  Bozeman  and 
Livingston,  then;  or  you  can  go  east  by  rail 
down  the  Yellowstone ;  or  you  can  divide  your 
party  and  part  go  by  rail  down  the  river  to 
Great  Falls,  and  meet  at  the  Mandan  villages, 
or  somewhere.  We  can  plan  that  out  later 
if  you  like. 

20  299 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"But  in  this  way  you  cover  all  that  big  sweep 
of  country  where  the  arm  of  the  Continental 
Divide  bends  south  and  holds  all  these  hundreds 
of  streams  around  the  Three  Forks  and  below. 
We'd  be  skirting  the  rim  of  that  great  bend  in 
the  mountains,  a  sort  of  circle  of  something 
like  two  hundred  miles  across;  and  we'd  be 
coming  back  to  the  old  river  again  at  the  Forks. 
Looks  to  me  that's  about  the  quickest  way  we 
can  cover  our  trip  and  the  way  to  get  the  fullest 
idea  of  the  real  river." 

"What  do  you  vote,  fellows?"  asked  their 
leader.  "This  looks  like  a  very  well-laid-out 
campaign,  to  me." 

"So  say  we  all  of  us !"  answered  Rob. 

"That's  right,"  added  John  and  Jesse. 

"All  right,  then,"  nodded  Billy.  "On  our 
way !  Roll  them  beds.  Keep  out  your  fishing 
tackle.  I'll  stop  in  town  and  telephone  to  Andy 
Sawyer  to  come  on  down  to  the  livery  at  Red 
Rock  and  pick  up  our  stock  there,  so  we  won't 
lose  any  time  getting  the  train." 

This  well-thought-out  plan  worked  so  well 
that  nothing  of  special  interest  happened  in 
their  steady  ride  down  to  the  railroad,  out  of 
the  historic  cove,  in  among  the  fields  and  houses 
of  the  later  land. 

And  to  make  quite  as  brief  the  story  of  their 
300 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

uneventful  journey  across  the  wide  and  treeless 
region  below,  it  may  be  said  that  on  the  evening 
of  the  next  day  they  pulled  in  at  the  little  log- 
cabin  hotel  of  Mrs.  Culver,  the  first  woman 
who  ever  saw  the  head  of  the  true  Missouri. 

That  lady,  quaint  and  small,  came  out  and 
made  them  welcome.  "I've  three  beds,  in  two 
rooms,"  said  she,  "and  you'll  have  to  double 
up,  but  I  can  feed  you  all,  I  guess." 

"Is  there  any  fishing?"  asked  Jesse.  But  an 
instant  later  he  answered  himself.  "Great 
Scott!"  said  he.  "Look  at  that  trout  jump. 
He's  big  as  a  whale.  Look  it — look  it,  fellows !" 

They  turned  as  he  pointed  down  the  hill  to 
the  wide,  clear  water  of  the  spring  creek.  A 
dozen  splashes  and  rings  showed  feeding  fish, 
and  large  ones. 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  their  hostess,  indifferently. 
"There's  a  good  many  of  them  in  there.  They 
seem  to  run  around  more  along  toward  eve- 
ning." 

The  young  sportsmen  could  not  wait  for 
supper.  Hurriedly  getting  together  their  rods 
and  reels,  they  soon  had  leaders  and  flies  ready 
and  were  running  down  the  slope  after  what 
bid  fair  to  be  rare  sport  with  the  great  fish 
which  they  saw  leaping. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

SPORT  WITH  ROD  AND  REEL 

r  I  'HE  three  young  Alaskans  were  all  very 
1  fair  masters  of  the  art  of  fishing  with  the 
fly,  and  now  surely  had  excellent  opportunity 
to  practice  it.  The  trout  and  grayling  were 
rising  in  scores,  and  for  half  a  mile  the  sur- 
face of  the  bright  water  was  broken  into  count- 
less rings  and  ripples.  Now  and  then  some 
fish  sprang  entirely  above  the  water.  John  and 
Jesse  took  the  nearer  shore,  while  Rob  hurried 
around  over  the  pole  bridge  at  the  head  of  the 
stream,  just  below  the  head  spring. 

"What  have  you  got  on,  John?"  asked  Jesse. 

"Jock  Scott,  No.  4,"  replied  John.  "Try  a 
good  big  Silver  Doctor ;  these  big  fellows  ought 
to  take  it." 

They  began  to  cast,  trying  to  reach  the  mid- 
channel,  where,  over  the  white  sand  of  the 
channel,  the  fish  were  rising  most  vigorously. 
All  at  once  Jesse  gave  an  exclamation. 

"Wow !    Look  at  that,  hey  ?" 

His  fly  had  been  taken  by  a  great  fish  which 
had  made  for  it  a  dozen  feet  away.  The  rod 

302 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

went  up  into  an  arch.  Again  and  again  the 
fish  sprang  high  above  the  water,  four,  five, 
six  times,  one  leap  after  another ;  and  then  came 
a  long,  steady  savage  run  which  carried  Jesse 
down  along  the  bank,  following  the  fish.  He 
had  all  he  could  do  to  master  the  powerful  fish, 
but,  keeping  on  a  steady  pressure,  he  at  last 
got  him  close  inshore,  where  John  netted  him. 

"That's  a  steelhead — that's  why  he's  such  a 
jumper !"  exclaimed  John.  "Well  done,  Jess !" 
exclaimed  John,  holding  up  the  splendid  fish  to 
view.  "Six  pounds,  if  he's  an  ounce !" 

A  sudden  shout  from  Rob,  across  the  water, 
called  their  attention.  He  also  was  playing  a 
heavy  fish,  which  broke  water  again  and  again. 

"What  you  got,  Rob?"  called  John. 

"Rainbow!"  answered  Rob,  across  the 
stream.  "He's  a  buster,  too!"  And  truly  it 
was  a  fine  one,  for  that  night  it  weighed  five 
and  three-quarter  pounds. 

"Hurry,  John — your  turn  now!"  shouted 
Jess.  "They're  the  fightingest  fish  you  ever 


saw." 


John  began  casting,  while  Jesse  watched, 
working  his  fly  to  where  he  saw  a  heavy  fish 
moving.  An  instant  and  he  struck,  the  reel 
screeching  as  the  fish  made  its  run.  This  time 
the  fish  did  not  jump,  but  played  deep,  boring 

303 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

and  surging,  but  at  last  John  conquered  it  and 
Jesse  slipped  the  net  under  it. 

"My !  It's  just  like  a  big  brook  trout,"  said 
he.  "I'll  bet  he'll  go  over  five  pounds." 

"No,"  said  John,  sagely.  "That's  a  Dolly 
Varden — looks  a  lot  like  a  brook  trout,  but 
look  at  the  blue  ring  around  the  red  spots. 
They  fight  deep — don't  jump  like  a  rainbow. 
But  the  steelhead  outjumps  them  all !  Did  you 
ever  see  such  fishing!  This  beats  the  Arctic 
trout  on  Rat  Portage." 

They  followed  down  the  pond  made  by  the 
dam,  and  literally  one  or  other  of  the  three  was 
all  the  time  playing  a  fish,  and  they  all  ran  very 
large.  When  at  last  they  answered  the  supper 
horn,  Rob  had  five  fish,  John  four,  and  Jesse 
two — the  last  a  fine,  fat  grayling,  the  first  he 
had  ever  taken  below  the  Arctic  Circle. 

Uncle  Dick's  eyes  opened  very  wide.  "Well, 
Billy,"  said  he,  "you've  made  good!  I  never 
saw  so  many  big  trout  taken  that  soon  in  any 
water  I  ever  knew!" 

"They  get  a  lot  of  feed  in  that  stream,"  said 
Billy.  "The  watercress  holds  a  lot  of  stuff 
they  eat,  and  there  must  be  minnows  in  there, 
too.  I've  heard  lots  of  men  say  that,  for  big 
fish,  this  beats  any  water  they  ever  knew." 

"Oh,  maybe  they  don't  run  as  big  as  they 
304 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

did,"  said  Mrs.  Culver;  "I've  known  several 
rainbows  over  ten  pounds  taken  here.  One 
gentleman  came  for  specimens  to  mount,  and 
he  caught  a  five-pound  rainbow,  but  his  friend 
made  him  throw  it  back  because  it  was  too 
little.  Then  they  fished  two  days  and  didn't 
get  any  more  rainbow  at  all ;  they're  so  savage, 
I  think  they  get  caught  first.  But  you've  got 
some  good  ones,  haven't  you  ?  Well,  I  like  to 
see  a  person  have  some  sport  when  he  comes 
here/' 

"How  long  have  you  lived  here,  Mrs.  Cul- 
ver ?"  asked  Billy,  that  night  at  the  dinner  table. 

"Oh,  all  my  life,  it  seems,"  she  laughed.  "I 
was  here  early,  in  the  'nineties,  when  Mr. 
B rower  came  to  get  to  the  head  of  Hell  Roar- 
ing. That  was  in  1895.  He  and  my  husband, 
Mr.  William  N.  Culver,  and  Mr.  Isaac  Jacques 
went  up  there  horseback.  They  called  that 
Hell  Roaring  Canon  then,  and  I  think  most 
folks  do  yet,  though  Mr.  Brower  as  a  scientific 
explorer  said  he  would  call  it  Culver  Canon 
after  that.  He  did,  but  his  story  of  the  ex- 
ploration never  got  to  be  very  widely  known. 
I  guess  they  were  the  first  to  get  to  the  head, 
except  Indians.  The  government  surveyors 
never  followed  out  the  river  above  Upper  Red 
Rock  Lake. 

305 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"They  made  two  tries  at  it.  The  first  time 
was  August  5,  1895.  They  left  their  horses 
and  waded  up  the  creek,  till  they  came  to  a  per- 
pendicular rock  across  the  canon.  It  was  hard 
going,  so  they  turned  back  that  day. 

"On  August  29th  they  tried  it  again.  They 
went  up  Horse  Camp  Creek  and  left  their 
horses  at  the  foot  of  Hanson  Mountain,  and 
took  one  pack  horse  and  cut  across  over  Han- 
son Mountain  and  then  went  down  into  the 
Hell  Roaring  Creek ;  but  they  had  to  leave  their 
pack  horse  then.  Beyond  that  they  took  to 
the  stream  bed  on  foot,  and  this  time  they  got 
up  on  top  and  followed  the  creek  to  its  source. 

"They  came  back  all  excited,  saying  they 
were  the  first  ever  to  follow  the  Missouri  to 
its  head.  They  named  a  little  lake,  up  near 
the  summit,  in  a  marshy  flat,  Lilian  Lake,  after 
me.  Just  a  little  way  beyond  that  they  found 
a  big  saucer-like  spot  in  the  round  little  hole 
up  there — peaks  all  around  it,  like  it  had  sunk 
down.  Well,  out  of  that  circular  marsh  the 
creek  comes.  That's  the  head — the  utmost 
source.  The  snow  from  the  peaks  feeds  into 
that  cup,  or  rather  saucer,  up  on  top,  back  of 
Mount  Jefferson. 

"I  don't  think  they  went  as  far  toward  the 
actual  head  as  I  did  myself,  for  it  was  late 

306 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

and  they  had  their  horses  to  find.  Now  on  Sep- 
tember 26,  1895,  I  rode  horseback  up  in  there 
with  Mr.  Allen,  and  we  rode  right  on  up  over 
Hanson,  and  down  into  Hell  Roaring,  and  be- 
yond where  they  left  their  pack  horse.  We 
rode  almost  all  the  way,  and  got  into  that  Hole 
in  the  Mountains,  as  Mr.  Brower  calls  the  de- 
pressed valley  up  on  top.  But  we  rode  on  clear 
past  it,  three  miles,  and  found  the  creek  plain 
that  far. 

"Almost  up  to  the  top  of  the  divide,  the 
creek  turns  northeast.  It  comes  out  from 
under  a  big  black  rock,  near  a  clump  of  balsam 
— like  my  spring  here,  only  not  so  big.  Mr. 
Brower  and  Mr.  Culver  had  marked  a  rock 
and  put  down  a  copper  plate  for  their  dis- 
covery. I  had  a  tin  plate,  and  I  scratched  my 
name  and  the  date  on  that.  There  wasn't  any 
mark  of  anyone  else  there,  and  we  were  quite 
beyond  the  place  where  Mr.  Brower  stopped. 
So  maybe  I  am  the  first  person,  certainly  the 
first  woman,  to  see  the  real  upper  spring  of  the 
Missouri  River. 

"Now  here  I  am,  all  alone  in  the  world,  as 
you  see.  Would  you  like  to  see  my  pressed 
flowers  and  my  other  things  ?" 

The  young  explorers  looked  at  the  tiny,  thin 
little  old  lady  with  reverence,  and  did  not  say 

307 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

anything  for  a  long  time,  before  they  began 
to  look  at  the  treasured  belongings  of  the  far- 
away cabin  home. 

"Do  you  boys  want  to  go  up?"  she  asked, 
after  a  time. 

"We  came  for  that,"  said  Rob. 

"You  couldn't  climb  up  the  canon  all  the 
way,  maybe.  Do  you  think  you  could  get  up 
over  the  mountain,  the  way  we  did?" 

"You  don't  know  these  boys,"  remarked 
Uncle  Dick  to  her.  "They're  old  mountain 
climbers  and  can  go  anywhere." 

"They'd  want  a  guide,  and  I  couldn't  go, 
now.  And  they'd  want  horses." 

"Well,  we'll  leave  out  the  guide,  and  we 
could  leave  out  the  horses,  like  enough,  for  we 
can  go  to  the  foot  of  the  mountain  in  the  car. 
But  on  the  whole  I  can  think  we'll  ride  up,  for 
a  change." 

"You  can  get  horses  down  at  the  ranch  a 
little  way.  I  have  none  here  now." 

"All  right.  To-morrow  we'll  outfit  for  the 
climb." 

"Well,  I  rode  all  the  way.  Now  you  go  on 
the  shoulder  of  this  mountain  back  of  us,  above 
the  spring,  and  work  up  the  best  you  can,  but 
keep  your  eye  on  Jefferson.  Get  up  right  high, 
before  you  head  across  to  the  canon  of  the 

308 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

Missouri,  so  you  can  be  above  the  high  cliff 
that  you  can't  get  over  in  the  bed  of  the  stream. 
Then  you  go  down  in  the  canon  and  cross,  best 
you  can,  and  then  ride  up  on  the  far  side,  and 
then  work  off  for  the  top  of  Jefferson. 

"You'll  know  the  little  bowl  on  top  the  moun- 
tain. That's  the  top  sponge.  But  the  real  head 
stream  is  even  beyond  that.  You'll  find  my 
tin  plate  there,  I  guess,  with  my  name  and 
date. 

"I'm  glad  you  had  some  good  fishing  here. 
We'll  have  some  of  your  trout  for  breakfast. 
The  feather  beds  are  made  from  wild-goose 
and  duck  feathers.  It's  been  a  great  country 
for  them." 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

THE  HEAD  OF  THE  GREAT  RIVER 

BRIGHT  and  early  they  were  in  the  saddle 
and  off  for  the  crowning  experience  of 
their  long  quest  for  the  head  of  the  great  Mis- 
souri. Billy  brought  up  the  horses  from  the 
ranch  below.  The  chauffeur  from  Monida  said 
he  "had  not  lost  any  mountains"  and  preferred 
not  to  make  the  ascent,  so  only  five  were  in  the 
party,  Billy,  of  course,  insisting  on  seeing  the 
head  of  the  river,  in  which  he  had  had  such 
interest  all  his  life. 

They  took  one  pack  horse,  a  few  cook- 
ing implements,  and  such  blankets  as  their 
hostess  could  spare,  their  own  bed  rolls  and 
most  of  their  equipment  having  gone  back 
to  Billy's  ranch  by  his  pack  train.  Their 
supply  of  food  was  only  enough  for  two  rneals 
— supper  and  breakfast — but  this  gave  them 
two  days  for  the  ascent,  whereas  Mrs.  Cul- 
ver had  made  it  in  one;  so  they  felt  sure  of 
success. 

Well  used  to  mountain  work,  and  guided  by 
a  good  engineer,  their  Uncle  Dick,  who  had 

310 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

spent  his  life  in  work  among  wild  countries, 
they  wound  easily  in  and  among  the  shoulders 
of  the  hills,  taking  distance  rather  than  sharp 
elevation,  and  so  gradually  and  without  strain 
to  the  horses  working  up  the  mountain  that  lay 
at  one  side  of  Mount  Jefferson.  When  they 
were  well  up,  they  followed  a  long  hogback  that 
swung  a  little  to  the  left,  and  at  length  turned 
for  their  deliberate  plunge  down  into  the  steep 
valley  of  the  stream.  Here,  among  heavy  tracts 
of  fallen  timber  and  countless  tumbled  rocks, 
they  came  at  last  to  the  white  water  of  their 
river,  now  grown  very  small  and  easily  ford- 
able  by  the  horses. 

"As  near  as  I  can  tell,"  said  Uncle  Dick, 
"we've  got  her  whipped  right  now.  This  must 
be  a  good  way  above  the  place  B rower  and 
Culver  left  their  horse.  We're  up  seventy-six 
hundred  and  forty  feet  now  by  the  aneroid. 
The  valley  is  around  seven  thousand  feet,  and 
B  rower  makes  the  summit  at  eight  thousand 
feet ;  so  we've  not  so  far  to  go  now.  We  crossed 
above  the  upper  Red  Rock  Lake,  and  Brower 
makes  the  whole  distance,  along  the  longest 
branch,  only  twenty  miles  from  the  head  spring 
to  the  lake.  A  mile  or  two  should  put  us  at 
the  edge  of  the  Hole  in  the  Mountains,  as  he 
calls  his  upper  valley.  What  do  you  say — shall 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

we  leave  our  horses  and  walk  it,  or  try  on  up 
in  the  same  way  ?" 

"I  vote  against  leaving  the  horses,"  said  Rob. 
"It's  nearly  always  bad  to  split  an  outfit,  and 
bad  to  get  away  from  your  base  of  supplies. 
I'd  say  keep  to  the  horses  as  high  as  they  can 
get.  A  good  mountain  horse  can  go  almost 
any  place  a  man  can,  if  you  leave  him  alone. 
If  it  gets  hard  to  ride,  we  can  walk  and  lead, 
or  drive  them  ahead  of  us  over  the  down 
timber." 

"And  then,  if  we  get  them  up  to  the  Hole, 
we  could  camp  up  in  there  all  night,"  suggested 
John.  "Like  enough,  we'd  be  the  first  to  do 
that,  anyhow." 

"And  maybe  the  last,"  laughed  Billy.  "It'll 
sure  be  cold  up  in  there,  with  no  tent  and  not 
much  bedding  and  none  too  much  to  eat.  We're 
above  the  trout  line,  up  here,  and  not  far  to  go 
to  timber  line,  if  you  ask  me." 

"Not  so  bad  as  that,  Billy,"  commented 
Jesse.  "Nine  thousand,  ninety-five  hundred — 
isn't  that  about  average  timber  line?  We're 
only  eight  thousand  at  our  upper  valley,  and 
we're  not  going  to  climb  to  the  top  of  the 
peaks." 

"Well,  I'm  game  if  you  all  are,"  said  Billy. 
"We  can  make  it  through  for  one  night,  all 

312 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

right,  for  when  the  firewood  runs  out  we  can 
make  camp  and  finish  on  foot/* 

"Go  on  ahead,  Jesse,"  said  Uncle  Dick. 
"You're  the  youngest.  Let's  see  how  good  a 
mountain  man  you  are." 

"All  right!"  said  Jesse,  stoutly.  "You  see." 
Accordingly,  they  rode  on  up,  slowly,  for  a 
little  distance,  allowing  the  horses  plenty  of 
time  to  make  their  way  among  rocks  and  over 
fallen  poles.  At  last  Jesse  came  to  a  halt  and 
dismounted,  leading  his  horse  for  a  way,  until 
he  brought  up  at  the  foot  of  such  a  tangle  of 
down  timber  and  piled  boulders  that  he  could 
not  get  on.  He  turned,  his  face  red  with 
chagrin.  "Well,"  he  said,  "I've  never  been 
here  before.  I  guess  a  fellow  has  to  figure 
it  out." 

"You  go  ahead  now,  John,"  laughed  Uncle 
Dick.  "Jess,  fall  to  the  rear;  you're  in  dis- 
grace." 

"All  right!"  said  John.  "You  watch  me." 
This  time  John  rode  back  downstream  a 
little,  until  clear  of  the  patch  of  heavy  down 
timber.  Then  he  turned  and  swung  up  above 
the  bed  of  the  stream,  angling  up  on  the  side  of 
the  mountain,  and  finally  heading  close  to  the 
foot  of  a  tall  escarpment  which  barred  the 
horses  for  a  way.  Here  he  hugged  the  cut 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

face  for  a  few  yards  and  by  good  fortune  found 
the  way  passable  beyond  for  quite  a  distance. 

"Not  bad,"  said  his  leader.  "Go  on.  I  see 
you've  got  the  idea  of  distance  for  elevation." 

"Yes,  sir,"  said  John.  "But  I'm  like  Jesse— 
I've  never  been  here  before,  and  I  don't  know 
just  where  I'm  going." 

"Humph!  Isn't  that  about  the  way  Lewis 
and  Clark  were  fixed,  only  all  the  way  across?" 
scoffed  Uncle  Dick.  "Go  ahead,  and  if  we 
have  to  get  down  and  lead,  I'll  put  Rob  ahead, 
or  Billy." 

John  gritted  his  teeth  and  spurred  up  his 
horse.  "You  give  me  time,"  said  he,  "and  I'll 
take  you  up  there." 

He  did  pursue  his  edging  away  from  the 
stream  until  he  could  no  longer  see  the  exact 
course.  At  last  he  pulled  up.  "We  must  have 
climbed  three  hundred  feet,"  said  he.  "Where 
is  it?" 

"What  do  you  say,  Rob?"  asked  Uncle 
Dick. 

"I'll  stay  behind  and  see  that  Mr.  Pack  Horse 
comes,"  replied  Rob.  "But  I  should  think  we 
might  angle  down  a  little  now,  because  we're 
going  up  the  wrong  split.  It's  two-thirty 
o'clock,  now,  and  we  ought  to  raise  the  Hole 
pretty  soon.  I'd  say  off  to  the  right  a  little 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

now,  wouldn't  you,  Billy,  till  we  raised  the 
Hole  for  sure?" 

Billy  nodded,  and  presently  set  out  ahead. 
His  practiced  eye  found  a  way  through  the 
hard  going  until  at  last  they  stood,  at  the  left 
and  above  the  stream's  entrance  into  a  roughly 
circular  little  depression,  surrounded  by  a 
broken  rim  of  high  peaks. 

"Here  she  is,  fellows!"  exclaimed  Uncle 
Dick.  "This  is  what  we've  been  looking  for! 
Yonder's  the  thread  of  the  water,  headed  for 
New  Orleans  and  the  last  jetty  of  the  Missis- 
sippi. What's  your  pleasure  now  ?" 

"Well,  sir,"  said  Rob,  who  had  for  some 
time  been  afoot,  leading  his  own  horse  and 
driving  the  pack  horse  ahead,  "why  not  throw 
off  here  and  finish  her  on  foot,  to  the  clean 
head,  where  Mrs.  Culver  left  her  tin  plate? 
Here's  a  trickle  of  water  and  enough  wood  for 
fire,  and  the  horses  can  get  enough  feed  to 
last  them  for  one  night." 

"All  right,"  said  Uncle  Dick.  "It's  all  in 
plain  sight  and  we  can't  lose  our  horses,  espe- 
cially if  we  halter  them  all  tight  till  we  get 
back." 

They  now  all  dismounted  and  made  their 
animals  fast  to  the  trees  and  stout  bushes,  first 
unlashing  the  pack. 
21 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"Good  work,  Billy !"  said  Rob,  as  he  helped 
cast  off  the  lash  rope.  "She  hasn't  slipped  an 
inch." 

"More'n  I  can  say,"  rejoined  Billy.  "I 
slipped  a  good  many  times,  coming  up,  and 
barked  my  shins  more'n  an  inch,  I'm  thinking." 

"Lead  off,  Jess,"  said  Uncle  Dick,  as  they 
stood  ready  for  the  last  march.  "No,  don't 
leave  your  coat;  it  will  soon  be  cold,  and  it  is 
always  cold  in  the  mountains  when  you  stop 
walking.  And  you  all  have  your  match  boxes  ?" 

"Why,  Uncle  Dick,"  expostulated  Jesse,  "it's 
just  over  there,  and  we  won't  need  any  fire 
there,  for  we're  coming  right  back." 

"But,  Jesse,  haven't  I  told  you  always  in  new 
country  to  travel  with  matches  and  a  hatchet, 
or  at  least  a  knife?  No  man  can  tell  when  he 
may  get  hurt  or  lost  in  mountain  work,  and 
then  a  fire  is  his  first  need.  It's  all  right  to 
know  how  to  make  a  fire  by  friction,  Indian 
way,  but  you  can't  always  do  that,  and  matches 
are  surer  and  quicker.  Never  leave  them." 

They  set  out,  their  leader  now  in  advance, 
Billy  bringing  up  the  rear.  Skirting  the  edge 
of  the  marshlike  depression  which  acted  as  a 
holding  cup  for  the  upper  snows,  they  at  last 
headed  it  and  caught  the  ultimate  trickle  that 
came  in  beyond  it.  This,  following  the  example 

316 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

of  their  late  hostess,  they  rapidly  ascended, 
until  at  last,  by  a  clump  of  dark  balsam  trees, 
high  up  toward  the  white  top  of  Jefferson, 
where  a  light  snow  had  fallen  not  long  before, 
even  in  the  summertime,  they  picked  out  the 
dark  rock  from  under  which  a  tiny  thread  of 
water,  icy  cold  and  sufficiently  continuous  to 
be  called  perennial,  issued  and  began  its  way 
to  a  definite  and  permanent  channel. 

Without  any  comment,  each  one  of  the  party, 
almost  unconsciously,  removed  his  hat.  A  feel- 
ing almost  of  awe  fell  upon  them  as  they  stood 
in  that  wild,  remote,  silent  and  sheltered  spot, 
unknown  and  unnoted  of  the  busy  world,  which 
now  they  knew  was  the  very  head  spring  of 
the  greatest  waterway  of  all  the  world. 

"'Shun!"  barked  Uncle  Dick.  The  three 
boys  fell  into  line,  heels  together,  in  the  position 
of  the  soldier,  Billy  following  suit.  Uncle  Dick 
drew  from  his  pocket  a  tiny,  folded  flag,  no 
more  than  four  or  five  inches  in  its  longest 
dimension,  and  pinned  it  on  a  twig  which  he 
placed  upright  at  the  side  of  the  spring. 

"Colors !"  Sharply  Uncle  Dick's  hand  swept 
to  his  eyes,  in  the  army  salute.  And  the  hand 
of  every  one  of  the  others  followed.  Then,  with 
swung  hat,  Rob  led  them  with  the  Scouts' 
cheer. 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"Let's  look  for  the  Culver  plate  now!"  ex- 
claimed Jesse,  and  scrambled  on  hands  and 
knees.  Indeed,  he  did  unearth  the  rusted  frag- 
ments of  what  might  have  been  the  original 
record  plate,  but  small  trace  now  remained  of 
any  inscription.  With  some  pride  he  next  drew 
out  from  his  shirt  front  a  plate  which  he  him- 
self had  concealed  thus  long,  brought  for  a  pur- 
pose of  like  sort  to  that  of  the  rusted  remnant 
they  now  had  found.  But  his  Uncle  Dick 
gently  restrained  him. 

"No,  better  not,  son,"  said  he.  "You  and 
I  have  done  very  little.  We  have  discovered 
nothing  at  all,  except  one  Indian  arrowhead  a 
hundred  miles  north  of  here.  To  leave  our 
names  here  now  would  only  be  egotism,  and 
that's  not  what  we  want  to  show.  Reverence 
is  what  we  want  to  show,  for  this  place  that 
was  here  before  Thomas  Jefferson  was  born, 
and  will  be  here  unchanged  after  the  last  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States  shall  have  passed  on. 

"Let  old  Mount  Jefferson  have  his  own  secret 
still  for  his  own — see  how  he  wipes  out  all 
traces  of  human  beings,  steadily  and  surely ! 

"In  all  their  great  journey  across,  Meri- 
wether  Lewis  did  not  once  write  his  name  on 
rock  or  tree.  Will  Clark  wrote  his  twice — 
once  on  Pompey's  Pillar,  on  the  Yellowstone, 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

and  once  on  the  rock  far  down  in  Nebraska, 
as  we  noted  when  we  passed  near  that  place. 
But  the  simplicity,  the  modesty  of  those  two, 
sinking  everything  in  their  great  duty  to  their 
country — it's  those  things,  my  boys,  which 
make  their  Journal  the  model  of  its  kind  and 
class,  and  their  journey  the  greatest  of  its  kind 
in  all  the  history  of  the  world. 

"Now  hats  off  to  Captain  Meriwether  Lewis 
and  Captain  William  Clark  of  the  army !  Had 
they  come  where  we  are  now,  they  would  not 
have  reached  the  Columbia.  In  courage,  good 
sense,  and  modesty,  the  first  and  best." 

They  did  salute,  once  more  and  in  silence. 
But  Uncle  Dick  put  a  hand  on  Jesse's  shoulder 
as  he  saw  tears  in  his  eyes. 

"It's  all  right,  son,"  said  he.  "Don't  mind, 
but  don't  forget.  Good  men  come  and  go ;  it's 
good  deeds  that  live.  Now,  we're  by  no  means 
first  at  this  spot,  and  it's  of  no  vast  consequence 
now.  We'll  even  let  our  little  flag  flutter  here 
alone,  till  the  snows  come,  and  the  slides  give  it 
its  evening  gun." 

They  turned  back  down  the  edge  of  the  de- 
pression in  the  mountain  top,  and  by  deep  dusk 
once  more  were  at  the  horse  camp,  where  Billy 
quickly  went  to  work  to  find  grass  and  wood. 
All  bore  a  hand.  They  got  up  all  the  dry  wood 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

they  could  find,  cut  stakes  for  a  back  log  pile 
of  green  logs,  spread  the  half  of  a  quilt  back 
of  their  slim  bed,  and  so  prepared  to  pass  a 
night  which  they  found  very  long  and  cold. 
Their  supper  now  was  cooked,  and  before  the 
small  but  efficient  fire  they  now  could  complete 
the  labors  of  their  own  day — each  boy  with 
his  notes,  and  John  with  the  map  which  he 
always  brought  up  each  day  at  least  in  sketch 
outline. 

"I  don't  know  just  how  many  people  ever 
have  been  in  here,"  said  Billy,  after  a  time. 
"Not  so  very  many,  sure,  for  nearly  all  try  to 
get  up  the  canon.  I  heard  that  a  man  and 
his  wife  once  climbed  up  the  canon,  but  I 
doubt  that.  There's  Bill  Bowers,  from  the 
head  of  Henry's  Lake,  he's  been  up  to  the 
top,  but  I  don't  know  just  how  far — he 
said  you  couldn't  follow  the  canon  all  the 
way.  I  don't  doubt  that  prospectors  and 
hunters  have  been  across  here,  and  the  Ban- 
nacks  hunted  these  mountains  for  sheep,  many 
a  year.  Used  to  be  great  bighorn  country,  and 
of  course,  if  this  country  never  was  known 
by  anybody,  the  bighorns  would  still  be  here. 
There's  stories  that  there's  a  few  in  back,  but 
I  don't  believe  it.  You  can  ride  up  the  south 
slope  of  Sawtelle  Mountain,  in  the  timber,  al- 

320 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

most  to  the  top,  and  almost  this  high.  I  guess 
she's  been  traveled  over,  all  right,  by  now. 
Only,  they  couldn't  carry  off  the  old  river.  If 
they  could,  I  guess  they'd  have  done  that,  too." 

That  night  the  stars  came  out  astonishingly 
brilliant  and  large.  The  silence  of  the  great 
hills  was  unbroken  even  by  a  coyote's  howl. 
To  them  all,  half  dozing  by  their  little  fire, 
it  did  indeed  seem  they  had  found  their  ultimate 
wilderness,  after  all. 

The  chill  of  morning  still  was  over  all  the 
high  country  when  they  got  astir  and  began 
to  care  for  the  horses  on  their  picket  ropes  and 
to  finish  the  cooking  of  their  remaining  food. 
Then,  each  now  leading  his  horse,  they  began 
to  thread  their  way  downhill.  Over  country 
where  now  they  had  established  the  general 
courses,  it  was  easier  for  such  good  mountain 
travelers  to  pick  out  a  feasible  way  down.  They 
crossed  the  canon  at  about  the  same  place,  but 
swung  off  more  to  the  right,  and  early  in  the 
morning  were  descending  a  timbered  slope 
which  brought  them  to  the  edge  of  the  Alaska 
Basin  and  the  Red  Rock  road.  They  now  were 
on  perfect  footing  and  not  far  from  the  Cul- 
ver camp,  so  they  took  plenty  of  time. 

"The  name  'Culver  Canon'  did  not  seem  to 
stick,"  said  Billy,  as  they  marked  the  gorge 

321 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

where  the  river  debouched,  far  to  their  right, 
now.  "I  don't  know  what  the  surveyors  call 
it — they  never  have  done  much  over  in  here 
but  guess  at  things  mostly — but  the  name  'Hell 
Roaring  Canon'  is  the  one  that  I've  always 
heard  used  for  it.  It's  not  much  known  even 
now.  A  few  people  call  it  the  'real  head  of  the 
Missouri,'  but  nobody  in  here  seems  to  know 
much  about  its  history,  or  to  care  much  about 
it.  They  all  just  say  it's  a  mighty  rough  canon, 
up  in.  Somehow,  too,  the  place  has  a  bad  name 
for  storms.  I've  heard  a  rancher  say,  over 
east  of  the  pass,  on  Henry's  Lake,  that  in  the 
winter  it  got  black  over  in  here  on  Jefferson, 
and  he  couldn't  sleep  at  night,  sometimes,  be- 
cause of  the  noise  of  the  storms  over  in  these 
canons.  Oh,  I  reckon  she's  wild,  all  right. 

"Now,  below  the  mouth,  you'll  see  all  the 
names  are  off.  Hell  Roaring  breaks  into  four 
channels  just  at  the  mouth,  over  the  wash. 
Fact  is,  there's  seven  channels  across  the  valley, 
in  all,  but  four  creeks  are  permanent,  and  they 
wander  all  out  yonder,  clean  across  the  valley, 
but  come  together  below,  above  the  upper  lake ; 
and  that's  the  head  of  the  Red  Rock,  which 
ought  to  be  called  the  Missouri  by  rights. 

"And  you  ought  to  have  seen  the  grayling 
once,  in  all  these  branches!"  he  added.  "No 

322 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

finer  fishing  ever  was  in  the  world.  The  water's 
as  bright  as  glass,  fast  and  clean,  and  not  top 
deep  to  wade,  with  bends  and  willow  coves  on 
below — loveliest  creeks  you  ever  saw.  Then, 
over  across,  is  a  creek  where  Jim  Blair,  a 
rancher,  planted  regular  brook  trout,  years  ago. 
They  get  to  a  half  pound,  three  quarters,  and 
take  the  fly  like  gentlemen.  But  all  this  coun- 
try's shot  to  pieces  now — automobiles  every- 
where, and  all  sorts  of  men  who  kill  the  last 
fish  they  can." 

"But  have  they  got  them  all?"  asked  Rob. 
"It  would  be  easy  planting  and  keeping  up  such 
waters  as  these." 

"Sure  it  would.  Well,  maybe  some  day 
f  olks'll  learn  that  the  old  times  in  their  country 
are  gone.  We  act  like  they  wasn't,  but  that's 
because  we've  got  no  sense — don't  know  our 
history. 

"Now,"  he  added,  as  they  forded  one  bright, 
merry  stream  that  crossed  their  way,  "you  all 
ride  down  the  road  to  where  the  bridge  is — 
that's  the  main  stream  again,  and  she's  pretty 
big — regular  river,  all  right.  Wait  for  me 
there  at  the  bridge.  I'll  see  if  I  can  pick  out 
a  fish  or  so.  I  see  a  dry  quaking  asp  lying  here 
that  some  fellow  has  left,  and  I'll  just  try  it 
myself.  You  know,  get  a  quaking-asp  pole 

323 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

that's  dry  and  hasn't  been  dead  too  long,  it's 
the  lightest  and  springiest  natural  fishing  rod 
that  grows.  The  tip  is  strong  enough,  if  it 
hasn't  rotted,  and  she  handles  almost  as  good 
as  a  boughten  rod.  Now  Rob,  you  lead  my 
horse  on  down,  and  I'll  try  it  along  the  willows 
with  a  'hopper.' ' 

"Oh,  let  me  go  along,  too !"  exclaimed  Jesse. 
"Lead  my  horse,  John  ?" 

"All  right,"  said  John.    "Good  luck." 

At  the  bridge,  a  half  mile  below,  the  three 
remaining  members  of  the  party  picketed  the 
horses  on  a  pleasant  grass  plat  near  the  road. 
Rob  went  exploring  for  a  little  way,  then,  with- 
out saying  anything,  began  to  get  together  some 
dry  wood  for  a  fire,  and  also  began  cutting 
some  short  willow  twigs  which  he  sharpened 
at  each  end. 

"The  'old  way/  Rob?"  said  John,  smiling. 

"Yes,"  nodded  Uncle  Dick.  "Rob  has  seen 
what  I  have  seen — there's  trout  in  this  water, 
and  grayling,  too.  Do  you  see  that  grayling 
between  the  bridge  there,  over  the  white  bar? 
I've  been  watching  him  rise.  So,  by  the  time 
we  get  a  broiling  fire,  maybe  Rob'll  have  need 
for  his  skewers — to  hold  a  fish  flat  for  broiling 
before  a  fire,  in  the  'old  way'  we  learned  in  the 
far  North.  Eh,  Rob?" 

324 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"That's  the  way  I  figured  it,  sir/1  replied 
Rob,  smiling.  "Billy'll  get  something  on  hop- 
pers, at  this  season,  for  that's  what  the  trout 
and  grayling  are  feeding  on,  right  now." 

Sure  enough,  in  not  much  over  a  half  hour, 
Billy  and  Jesse  met  them  at  the  bridge,  with 
five  fine  fish — two  grayling  and  three  trout — 
Jesse  very  much  excited. 

"All  you  have  to  do  is  just  to  sneak  up  and 
drop  a  hopper  right  in  the  deep  water  at  the 
bends,  and  they  nail  it !"  said  he.  "Billy  showed 
me.  He  always  carries  a  few  hooks  and  a  line 
in  his  vest  pocket,  he  told  me.  Fish  all  through 
this  country !" 

It  took  the  boys  but  a  few  minutes  to  split 
the  fish  down  the  back  and  skewer  them  flat, 
without  scaling  them  at  all.  Then  they  hung 
them  before  the  fire,  flesh  side  to  the  flame, 
and  soon  they  were  sizzling  in  their  own  fat. 

"Now,  you  can't  put  them  on  a  plate,  Billy !" 
said  Jesse,  as  Billy  began  searching  in  the  pack. 
"Just  some  salt — that's  all.  You  have  to  eat 
it  right  off  the  skin,  you  know." 

"Well,  that  ain't  no  way  to  eat,"  grumbled 
Billy.  "It's  awful  mussy-looking,  to  my  way 
of  thinking." 

"Try  it,"  said  Uncle  Dick,  whittling  himself 
a  little  fork  out  of  a  willow  branch.  And  very 

325 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

soon  Billy  also  was  a  believer  that  the  'old 
way*  of  the  Arctic  Indians  is  about  the  best 
way  to  cook  a  fish. 

Now,  having  appeased  their  hunger,  they 
saddled  again  and  made  their  way  slowly  to 
the  ranch  of  Mrs.  Culver  at  the  Picnic  Spring, 
as  the  place  'was  called — in  time  for  Jesse  and 
John  each  to  catch  a  brace  of  great  trout  before 
dusk  had  come. 

They  now  were  all  willing  to  vote  their  ex- 
perience of  the  past  two  days  to  be  about  the 
pleasantest  and  most  satisfying  of  any  of  the 
trip,  which  now  they  felt  had  drawn  to  a  nat- 
ural close.  That  evening  they  all,  including 
their  sprightly  hostess,  bent  late  over  the  table, 
covered  with  maps  and  books. 

"I  surely  will  be  sorry  to  see  you  leave,"  said 
the  quaint  little  woman  of  the  high  country. 
"It's  not  often  I  see  many  who  know  any  his- 
tory of  the  big  river,  or  who  care  for  it.  But 
now  I  can  see  that  you  all  surely  do.  You  know 
it,  and  you  love  it,  too." 

"If  you  know  it  well,  you  can't  well  help 
loving  it,  I  reckon,"  said  Billy  Williams. 


CHAPTER  XXX 

SPORTING  PLANS 

"I  ETS  see,  Rob— what  day  of  the  month  is 
Li  this?"  began  John,  the  following  morn- 
ing, when,  their  bills  for  the  horses  and  them- 
selves all  discharged  and  their  motor  car  pur- 
ring at  the  gate,  they  bade  farewell  to  their 
interesting  friend  and  prepared  to  head  east- 
ward once  more. 

"Well,"  said  Rob,  "we  were  at  the  Three 
Forks  on  July  27th,  and  we  spent  a  week  getting 
to  the  Shoshoni  Cove — that's  August  4th ;  and 
we  left  on  August  5th,  and  got  to  Monida 
August  6th,  and  came  here  that  day;  and  day 
before  yesterday  was  the  7th,  and  we  came 
down  the  mountain  yesterday,  the  8th;  this 
must  be  about  August  9th,  I  suppose." 

"That's  right,"  said  Uncle  Dick;  "giving  us 
a  full  week  or  even  more  if  we  want  it,  to 
explore  the  Madison  Fork,  which  is  another 
head  of  the  big  river.  Then  we'll  wind  up  on 
the  Gallatin  head,  at  Billy's  place,  and  figure 
there  what  we  want  to  do  next.  We  might  well 
stop  at  the  head  of  Henry's  Lake,  and  in  a  day 

327 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

or  so  we'll  pick  up  Billy's  car  there  and  be  on 
our  way,  with  a  camp  outfit  of  our  own  again." 

Their  journey  over  the  clean,  hard  road 
around  the  rim  of  the  wide  Alaska  Basin  was 
one  of  delight.  They  sped  down  the  farther 
slope  of  the  Red  Rock  Pass,  along  the  bright 
waters  of  Duck  Creek,  until  early  in  the  after- 
noon they  raised  the  wide  and  pleasing  view 
of  Henry's  Lake,  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
valleys  of  the  Rockies.  Around  this  the  road 
led  them  comfortably  enough  to  the  cluster  of 
log  cabins  and  tents  which  was  now  to  make 
their  next  stopping  place.  Here  they  sent  back 
the  Monida  car,  whose  driver  said  he  could 
make  the  Picnic  Creek  camp  by  nightfall  if  he 
drove  hard.  Soon  they  all  were  made  com- 
fortable in  the  cabins  of  this  "dude  ranch,"  as 
the  Western  people  call  any  place  where  tour- 
ists are  taken  in  for  pay. 

The  proprietor  of  this  place  was  an  old-time 
settler  who  could  remember  the  days  of  buffalo 
and  beaver  in  this  country,  and  who  told  them 
marvelous  tales  of  the  enormous  number  of 
trout  in  the  lake. 

"Go  down  to  the  landing,  below  the  tamarack 
swamp,"  said  he,  "and  get  a  boat  and  just  push 
out  over  the  moss  a  little  way.  Off  to  the  right 
you'll  see  a  stake  sticking  up  in  the  water.  Drop 

328 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

your  anchor  a  little  way  from  it  and  cast  that 
way ;  it  marks  a  spring,  or  cold  hole,  and  they 
lie  in  there." 

The  three  boys  did  as  advised,  and  to  their 
great  surprise  began  to  catch  trout  after  trout 
as  they  cast  their  flies  toward  the  indicated 
spot.  They  all  were  about  the  same  size,  just 
under  two  pounds,  all  native  or  cutthroat  trout. 
They  soon  tired  of  it,  and  returned  nearly  all 
of  their  catch  to  the  water  as  soon  as  taken. 
Sometimes  a  fish,  tired  with  the  struggle,  would 
lie  at  the  bottom,  on  its  side,  as  though  dead, 
but  if  touched  with  the  end  of  the  landing-net 
handle  would  recover  and  swiftly  dart  away. 

"From  all  I  learn,"  said  Rob,  "this  fishing  is 
too  easy  to  be  called  sport — they  lie  in  all  the 
spring  holes  and  creek  mouths.  This  is  the 
head  of  the  Henry's  Fork  of  the  Snake  River, 
and  a  great  spawning  ground.  Now,  you  want 
to  remember  you're  not  on  Missouri  waters, 
but  Pacific  waters.  If  Lewis  and  Clark  had 
come  over  that  shallow  gap  yonder — the  Ray- 
nolds  Pass,  which  cuts  off  the  Madison  Valley 
— they'd  have  been  on  one  of  the  true  heads  of 
the  Columbia.  But  they  probably  never  would 
have  got  through,  that  year,  at  least." 

The  young  anglers  found  that  their  catch  of 
trout  created  no  enthusiasm  at  the  camp.  The 

329 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

cook  told  them  that  he  didn't  care  for  these 
trout  very  much,  because  you  had  to  soak  them 
overnight  in  salt  and  water  to  make  them  fit 
to  eat,  they  tasted  so  muddy  in  the  summer- 
time. So  they  said  they  would  not  fish  any 
more  at  that  place. 

That  evening  as  they  sat  about  their  table 
engaged  with  their  maps  and  notebooks,  they 
were  joined  by  Jim,  the  son  of  the  rancher,  a 
young  man  still  in  the  half  uniform  of  the  re- 
turned soldier,  with  whom  they  all  rapidly 
made  friends,  the  more  so  since  he  proved  very 
well  posted  in  the  geography  of  that  part  of  the 
country.  He  readily  agreed  to  take  the  young 
explorers  on  a  trip  over  the  Raynolds  Pass  on 
the  following  morning,  so  that  they  might  get 
a  better  idea  of  the  exact  situation  of  the  Madi- 
son River. 

They  made  an  early  start,  leaving  their 
uncle  Dick  and  Billy  Williams  at  the  ranch  to 
employ  themselves  as  they  liked.  It  was  a 
drive  of  only  a  few  miles  from  the  northern 
end  of  Henry's  Lake,  along  a  very  good  road, 
to  the  crest  of  the  gentle  elevation  which  lay 
to  the  northward.  The  young  ranchman  pulled 
up  the  car  at  last  and  pointed  to  an  iron  plug 
driven  down  into  the  ground. 

"Here's  the  Divide,"  said  he.  "You  now  are 
330 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

on  top  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  although  it 
doesn't  look  like  it." 

"Why/'  said  Jesse,  "this  looks  like  almost 
any  sort  of  prairie  country.  We  have  been  in 
lots  of  places  higher  than  this." 

"Yes,"  said  his  new  friend,  "you  can  see  lots 
of  places  higher  than  this  any  way  you  look. 
She's  only  six  thousand  nine  hundred  and 
eleven  feet  here.  There  are  snow-topped  moun- 
tains on  every  side  of  you.  Where  we  are  right 
now  is  the  upper  line  of  the  state  of  Idaho. 
Idaho  sticks  up  in  here  in  a  sort  of  pocket — 
swings  up  to  the  north  and  then  back  again. 
The  crest  of  the  Divide  is  what  makes  the  state 
line  between  Montana  and  Idaho.  Four  feet 
that  way  we  are  on  Idaho  ground,  but  there's 
Montana  east  of  us,  north  of  us,  and  west  of  us. 

"Over  southwest,  where  you  came  over  the 
Red  Rock  Pass,  is  the  head  of  the  Missouri. 
On  north  of  here  is  the  Madison  River;  it 
comes  in,  running  northwest  out  of  the  upper 
corner  of  Yellowstone  Park.  We  could  drive 
down  there  in  a  little  while  to  the  mouth  of  the 
West  Fork,  but  I  think  we  can  get  better  fish- 
ing somewhere  else. 

"If  we  went  on,  an  hour  or  so,  we  would 
come  to  the  mouth  of  the  Madison  Canon.  Up 
toward  the  head  of  that  is  the  big  power  dam — 

22  331 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

ninety  feet  high  it  is — which  cuts  off  the  big 
Madison,  and  the  South  Fork,  too.  That  makes 
a  lake  that  runs  over  back  into  the  country. 
They  say  it  is  seventy  miles  or  so  around  the 
shore  line,  I  don't  know  just  how  far.  That 
place  is  full  of  big  fish,  and  when  you  catch  it 
just  right,  there  is  great  sport  there.  I  don't 
call  it  sport  to  fish  for  trout  under  that  big  dam. 
They  jump  and  jump  there,  day  after  day, 
until  they  wear  themselves  out.  There  ought 
to  be  a  ladder  in  that  dam,  but  there  isn't." 

"I  suppose  here  is  where  the  road  comes 
down  from  Three  Forks,  over  this  Raynold's 
Pass,"  said  John,  with  pencil  in  hand,  ready 
to  continue  his  own  personal  map  of  the 
country. 

"No,  not  exactly,"  continued  the  young 
ranchman.  "This  road  runs  up  to  Virginia 
City.  They  tell  me  that  between  there  and 
Three  Forks  the  roads  are  hard  to  get  over." 

"But  they  come  down  here  from  Butte,  don't 
they?"  inquired  Rob.  "I  thought  this  was 
right  on  the  Butte  road." 

"No,  the  best  road  to  Butte  comes  in  over 
Red  Rock  Pass  just  exactly  where  you  came 
in  yourselves.  Only  it  runs  along  to  the  north 
side  of  the  Centennial  Valley  and  not  on  the 
south  side,  where  you  came  in.  They  have  to 

332 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

follow  up  the  Red  Rock  Valley  to  Dillon,  where 
it  comes  in  from  the  north.  That's  the  quick- 
est and  easiest  way  to  get  between  Butte  and 
Henry's  Lake.  It  is  something  over  a  hun- 
dred miles." 

"Well,  anyway,"  argued  John,  "this  is  the 
way  Billy  Williams  will  have  his  car  come  in 
from  Bozeman." 

"No,"  smiled  the  young  man,  "you  are  wrong 
again  on  that.  The  Bozeman  road  cannot  come 
down  the  Gallatin,  and  through  to  here,  south 
of  the  Three  Forks.  When  we  come  over  to 
the  edge  of  Yellowstone  Park  I  will  show  you 
how  the  road  runs  to  Bozeman.  It  angles  in 
north,  to  the  east  of  the  South  Fork  of  the 
Madison.  Then  it  crosses  the  main  river  and 
swings  off  to  the  northeast,  and  then  north  up 
to  Bozeman,  in  the  valley  of  the  Gallatin 
River." 

"Well,"  said  Rob,  turning  to  his  younger 
associates,  "that  seems  to  give  us  a  pretty  good 
look  in  at  this  whole  proposition  of  the  Mis- 
souri River.  We  have  been  on  the  head  of 
the  Jefferson  Fork ;  we  are  going  fishing  on  the 
South  Fork  of  the  Madison  and  motor  to  the 
head  of  the  North  Fork,  inside  of  Yellowstone 
Park,  if  we  wanted  to ;  and  then  we  are  going 
on  up  to  the  Gallatin  and  maybe  east  on  that 

333 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

to  its  head  in  the  Bozeman  Pass.  In  that  way 
we  would  be  covering  all  three  of  the  great 
tributaries." 

"Yes,  and  be  having  some  pretty  good  sport 
besides,"  said  the  young  ranchman.  "I  will 
promise  you,  if  you  don't  like  this  lake  fishing 
— I  don't  much  care  for  it  myself — we  will 
make  up  a  party  and  go  over  and  camp  out 
on  the  South  Fork  of  the  Madison  as  soon  as 
your  car  comes  in  from  Bozeman.  I  will  take 
my  car  over,  too,  and  we'll  pick  up  a  young 
chap  about  your  age,  Mr.  Rob,  at  one  of  the 
ranches  below.  His  name  is  Chester  Ellicott, 
and  he's  descended  from  the  Andrew  Ellicott 
of  Pennsylvania,  who  taught  astronomy  to 
Meriwether  Lewis. 

"Then  we  can  spend  a  couple  of  days  or  so 
over  there  on  what  I  think  is  the  finest  fishing 
river  in  the  world.  You  will  still  be  right  on 
your  road  to  Bozeman  and  the  Gallatin,  be- 
cause you  will  then  be  only  about  six  or  eight 
miles  from  the  town  of  Yellowstone,  and  near 
where  the  Bozeman  road  comes  in." 

"That  certainly  does  sound  mighty  good  to 
me,"  said  Jesse.  "I  haven't  caught  a  fish  now 
for  a  couple  of  days,  except  those  we  caught 
at  the  lake  this  afternoon.  There  were  so 
many  of  them,  it  was  too  easy." 

334 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"Well,"  said  their  new  companion,  "you 
won't  find  catching  grayling  on  the  South  Fork 
quite  so  easy  as  all  that.  I  always  liked  stream 
fishing  myself  better  than  lake  fishing." 

"Do  we  wade  over  there,  in  that  stream?" 
asked  Rob.  "We  haven't  got  our  waders 
along,  ourselves,  not  even  rubber  boots." 

"We'll  fix  you  up  somehow  at  the  place," 
responded  the  other.  "My  friends  in  here  have 
all  got  waders.  You  could  fish  from  the  banks, 
but  it  is  better  to  have  waders,  so  you  can  cross 
once  in  a  while.  There  are  holes  in  there  ten 
or  fifteen  feet  deep,  and  I  will  show  you  two 
or  three  hundred  grayling  and  white  fish  on  the 
bottom  of  some  of  those  holes.  The  water  is 
clear  as  air,  and  just  about  as  cold  as  ice.  You 
couldn't  have  come  at  a  better  time  for  fishing, 
because  the  grasshoppers  are  on  now  and  even 
the  whitefish  are  feeding  on  the  surface." 

"I  wish  Billy's  man  would  hurry  up  with  the 
car,"  complained  Jesse.  "He  said  to  be  down 
here  in  about  a  week.  We  might  have  to  wait 
an  extra  day." 

"Well,  out  here,"  smiled  his  new-found 
friend,  "we  don't  mind  waiting  a  day  or  so, 
but  I  suppose  you  folks  from  back  in  the  East 
get  in  more  of  a  hurry.  Anyhow,  we  will 
promise  you  a  good  time." 

335 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

They  now  returned  to  the  ranch  house  at  the 
head  of  Henry's  Lake,  without  going  on  to 
the  Madison  River  below  the  mouth  of  the 
canon,  where  the  young  rancher  thought  the 
fishing  would  not  be  so  much  worth  while.  To 
their  great  surprise,  they  found  yet  another  car 
waiting  for  them  at  the  camp — none  less  than 
Billy  Williams's  car,  with  all  their  camp  outfit. 
This  had  been  brought  down  from  Bozeman 
by  Con  O'Brien,  one  of  Billy's  neighbors  in 
the  Gallatin,  as  they  learned  when  they  had  had 
time  to  make  inquiries. 

"Well,  that's  what  I  call  fast  work!"  said 
John,  after  they  had  shaken  hands  all  round. 
"Here's  our  bed  rolls  and  everything,  all  wait- 
ing for  us!  Yet  we  have  been  two  hundred 
miles  from  them  on  one  side  of  the  circle,  and 
they've  been  around  two  or  three  hundred  miles 
on  the  other  side." 

"Well,  the  pack  train  came  in  from  Dillon 
early  yesterday  morning,"  said  Con,  "and  I 
already  had  Billy's  message.  So  I  just  un- 
packed old  Sleepy  and  Nigger,  threw  the  stuff 
in  the  car,  and  hit  the  trail  south." 

"But  how  did  you  get  here  so  soon?"  de- 
manded Rob.  "It  must  be  a  good  deal  over  a 
hundred  miles." 

"You  don't  know  our  mountain  roads  in  this 
336 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

country,"  smiled  Con.  "Besides,  it  is  only 
about  ninety  miles  from  Bozeman,  the  way  we 
figure  it.  Anyhow,  here  we  are  and  ready  for 
any  sort  of  frolic  you  want  to  name.  If  I  had 
started  a  little  earlier,  I  would  have  been  in 
here  last  night.  But  I  was  fixing  up  a  tire  at 
Yellowstone,  so  I  just  thought  I  would  sleep 
there  last  night  and  come  out  in  the  morning 
early." 

"What  shall  we  do,  young  gentlemen,"  asked 
Uncle  Dick.  "The  day  is  still  young." 

"Well,"  said  Rob,  "I  am  for  heading  right 
back  to  the  South  Fork  of  the  Madison  and 
going  into  camp  there  for  the  rest  of  the  trip — 
that  is,  until  we  have  to  start  up  to  Billy's 
ranch." 

They  all  agreed  to  this,  and  accordingly  after 
they  had  finished  their  luncheon,  they  said 
good-by  to  the  obliging  ranchman,  whose  son, 
as  he  had  promised,  now  accompanied  them  in 
his  own  car.  In  the  course  of  an  hour  they  had 
picked  up  the  latter's  friend  from  his  ranch 
at  the  foot  of  the  Lake  and  soon  were  speed- 
ing rapidly  eastward  over  the  Targhee  Pass — 
once  more  leaving  Idaho  and  going  into  the 
state  of  Montana;  a  proposition  which  they 
now  from  their  maps  could  easily  understand. 
They  traced  out  carefully  the  great  southward 

337 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

swing  of  the  Continental  Divide  which  comes 
through  the  Yellowstone  Park,  bends  around 
over  to  the  south,  thence  swings  north  and 
west,  making  the  great  mountain  pocket  which 
holds  all  the  headwaters  of  the  Missouri  River. 

Both  cars  halted  at  the  summit  of  a  hill  be- 
fore they  swung  down  into  the  valley  of  the 
South  Fork.  The  view  which  lay  before  them 
was  one  of  extreme  beauty.  The  sky  was  very 
clear  and  blue,  with  countless  clean  white 
clouds.  Over  to  the  left  rose  great  ragged 
mountain  peaks,  on  some  of  which  snow  still 
was  to  be  seen.  On  ahead  stretched  the  road 
leading  into  Yellowstone  Park.  On  the  fur- 
ther side  of  the  valley,  where  the  winding  wil- 
low growth  showed  the  course  of  the  stream, 
rose  a  black  forest  ridge  stretching  indefinitely 
eastward  toward  the  waters  of  the  main 
Madison. 

Not  even  Uncle  Dick,  experienced  traveler 
that  he  was,  could  suppress  an  exclamation  of 
surprise  at  the  beauty  of  the  scene. 

"I  never  get  tired  of  it.  Do  you,  Chet?" 
said  young  Bowers  to  his  ranch  friend.  The 
latter  only  smiled. 

"It  used  to  be  a  great  beaver  country,  of 
course,"  went  on  the  former.  "All  through 
here  the  elk  come  down  even  yet,  though  not 

338 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

so  many  as  there  used  to  be.  The  big  fall 
migration  that  came  down  the  Madison  and 
Grayling  Creek  used  to  come  out  the  northwest 
corner  of  the  Park  more  than  it  does  now.  I 
have  seen  lots  of  grouse  all  through  here,  and 
if  you  could  wait  until  the  season  opened  we 
would  have  some  fun,  for  I  have  a  fine  old 
dog.  But  since  game  is  getting  scarcer  now, 
maybe  we  had  better  just  content  ourselves  with 
the  fishing.  I  promise  you  good  sport — if  you 
know  how  to  cast  a  fly." 

"And  I'll  promise  you  they  do,"  said  Uncle 
Dick,  smiling. 

The  two  young  local  anglers  looked  at  them 
politely,  but  said  nothing. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

AMONG  THE  GRAYLING 

TURNING  at  a  point  upon  the  further  side 
of  the  valley,  where  the  road  forked  off 
for  the  Yellowstone  Park,  the  two  cars  passed 
on  to  the  northward,  through  two  or  three  gates 
of  wire  fences  inclosing  a  ranch  that  lay  in 
the  valley.  They  found  the  ranchman  himself 
at  home,  and  most  courteous  and  obliging.  He 
insisted  they  should  camp  near  his  house  and 
stay  as  long  as  they  liked,  where  they  could 
get  chickens,  butter,  and  eggs  without  any  in- 
convenience. 

"I  post  my  land,"  said  he,  "to  keep  off  the 
general  public,  who  soon  would  ruin  all  the 
fishing  here  as  they  have  almost  everywhere 
else,  but  I  have  no  desire  to  keep  off  decent 
fishermen  like  yourselves;  and  I  know  the 
young  men  who  are  with  you  now. 

"You  are  just  in  time  for  the  evening  rise. 
I  was  over  and  picked  out  a  couple  for  break- 
fast just  now.  If  I  were  in  your  place  I  would 
go  straight  across  and  then  work  up  the  stream 
a  little  way,  to  some  big  holes  you  will  see, 

340 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

then  you  can  fish  on  down  about  as  far  as  you 
like.  By  being  careful  at  the  crossings,  some 
of  you  can  keep  to  the  stream  pretty  much  all 
the  time,  but  you  can  fish  from  the  bank  if  you 
are  patient.  Toward  dusk  there  will  be  fish 
enough  rising  from  almost  any  one  hole  to  give 
you  all  the  fishing  you  will  like. 

"I  think  you  will  find  a  very  small  gray 
hackle  will  be  good.  Sometimes  they  take  the 
Professor.  Just  the  other  day  a  man  came 
down  here  with  a  little  Silver  Doctor  fly,  and 
they  couldn't  keep  away  from  it.  Sometimes 
they  take  Queen  of  the  Waters — dressed  long, 
like  a  grasshopper — in  the  bright  time  of  the 
day.  If  they  take  little  flies  in  the  evening, 
then  you  use  little  flies,  too.  There  are  cer- 
tainly plenty  of  the  grayling  there." 

On  any  stream  but  this  the  number  of  rods 
now  present  would  have  spoiled  the  sport  for 
some  one,  but  so  extensive  was  the  good  fishing 
water  that  there  was  room  enough  for  all  six 
of  those  who  intended  to  fish — Billy  said  he 
would  go  along  and  carry  the  basket  for  Jesse, 
and  Con  O'Brien  laughed  at  the  idea  of  fish- 
ing, as  he  had  already  had  so  much  that  sum- 
mer ;  so  he  went  with  Uncle  Dick.  They  broke 
into  three  parties,  one  each  of  the  men  going 
along  with  one  of  the  young  anglers,  although 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

Chet  and  his  friend  were  so  used  to  the  stream 
that  they  needed  no  advice.  These  two  for  a 
time  did  not  fish  at  all,  but  showed  the  new- 
comers how  and  where  the  sport  would  be 
found. 

The  prediction  of  the  rancher  was  more 
than  verified.  The  day  had  been  warm,  and 
now,  as  the  cool  of  the  evening  came,  the  gray- 
ling began  to  rise.  At  the  heads  of  the  bluffs 
where  the  current  swept  in  they  could  be  seen 
breaking  almost  continually,  taking  in  some 
small  floating  insects.  Inside  of  a  few  minutes 
each  of  the  anglers  was  fast  to  a  fine  fish ;  and 
after  that  one  strike  after  another  followed 
fast  and  furious. 

"You  will  have  to  be  careful,  son,"  said 
Billy  Williams  to  Jesse,  who  had  raised  three 
fine  grayling  and  lost  them  all.  "The  mouth 
of  a  grayling  is  very  tender.  You  can't  fight 
him  as  hard  as  you  can  a  trout.  Let  him  run. 
When  he  gets  that  big  black  fin  up  crossways 
of  the  stream  he  pulls  like  a  ton.  After  a 
while  he  will  begin  to  go  deep ;  then  you  want 
to  lift  him  gently  all  the  time,  until  in  a  few 
minutes  you  can  get  the  net  under  him.  I 
would  rather  fish  grayling  than  trout,  although 
some  think  trout  fishing  is  more  fun. 

"Now  look  at  that  fellow  jumping  over  there 
342 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

under  the  bushes.  He's  rising  right  in  the 
same  place.  You  walk  around  there  at  that 
little  sand  bar,  and  float  your  fly  right  over 
him  and  see  what  happens." 

Jesse  did  as  instructed,  Billy  following  a 
little  distance  behind  him.  Whipping  his  fly 
backward  and  forward  a  few  times  to  dry  it 
well,  Jesse,  who  was  really  a  good  fisherman 
for  his  years,  managed  to  land  the  fly  just  short 
of  the  bushes,  so  that  it  floated  down  directly 
over  the  rising  fish. 

There  came  a  sudden  splash  and  an  excited 
shout  from  Jesse.  "Fve  got  him !"  exclaimed 
he. 

"Maybe  so,"  said  Billy.  "You  had  them 
other  three,  too,  but  you  didn't  get  them  in  the 
basket.  Now  you  go  easy,  young  man,  and 
put  this  one  where  I  can  get  my  hands  on  him." 

Thus  warned,  Jesse  played  the  fish  gently 
and  carefully,  allowing  it  to  run  down  into  the 
deep  water,  but  keeping  his  rod  tip  up  all  the 
time  and  giving  line  when  the  fish  surged  too 
hard  with  the  current.  After  several  minutes 
of  careful  work  Billy  waded  in  knee  deep  and 
slipped  the  landing  net  under  the  fish — a  beau- 
tiful specimen,  of  a  pound  and  a  half,  clean, 
fat,  and  very  beautiful  with  its  great  spotted 
fin. 

343 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"There  you  are,  son,"  said  he.  "That's  your 
first  grayling,  isn't  it?" 

"It's  my  first  one  of  this  sort,"  said  Jesse, 
bending  over  the  fish.  "You  know,  I  didn't 
catch  either  of  those  over  on  the  Red  Rock. 
Of  course,  I  have  caught  them  up  North  on  the 
Bell  River,  on  the  Arctic  Circle,  but  they  are 
a  deep-blue  color  up  there  and  this  fish  is 
white,  or,  anyhow,  gray.  He  is  just  the  same 
shape  as  far  as  I  can  see." 

"Well,  get  back  at  your  work  now,"  said 
Billy.  "This  is  the  only  grayling  stream  left 
in  the  West.  You  are  on  it  at  the  right  time 
of  the  year  and  the  right  time  of  the  day.  Ten 
years  from  now  may  be  too  late.  So  catch  a 
few — but  not  too  many." 

"You  needn't  fear,"  said  Jesse.  "If  either 
of  us  boys  brought  in  more  than  half  a 
dozen,  Uncle  Dick  would  give  us  a  good  calling 
down." 

"Well,  that's  right  enough,  too,"  said  Billy. 
"The  state  limit  is  twenty  pounds  a  day,  but 
that's  too  high.  If  everybody  got  twenty 
pounds  they  would  soon  all  be  gone.  Yet  on 
the  spawning  run  above,  on  the  stream  up  here, 
I  have  seen  fellows  stand  on  the  bank  and 
snake  out  strings  of  them  as  long  as  a  long 
willow  would  hold.  I  have  known  one  man  to 

344 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

say  he  had  caught  ninety  grayling  out  of  one 
hole.  Well,  that's  where  they  go." 

They  wandered  along  slowly  in  the  late 
afternoon,  passing  around  one  willow  plant  to 
the  next,  usually  fishing  at  some  place  where 
the  grassy  meadow  ran  clean  to  the  bank  of  the 
stream.  They  did  not  lack  in  sport,  and  before 
long  Jesse  had  a  half  dozen  fine  fish  in  his 
basket;  then,  sighing,  he  said  regretfully  he 
thought  he  ought  not  to  fish  any  longer. 

"I  will  not  urge  you  to,"  said  Billy  Williams. 
"  'Most  anybody  else  would.  But  if  you  have 
got  enough,  let's  go  back  to  camp.  We  have 
got  to  feed  ourselves,  of  course,  and  give  plenty 
to  the  ranchman  if  he  will  take  them;  he  may 
have  friends  to  whom  he  would  like  to  send  a 


mess." 


At  dusk  that  evening  they  all  gathered 
around  their  little  camp  fire,  which  they  had 
built  not  very  far  from  the  hospitable  ranch- 
man's house,  in  acceptance  of  his  kind  invita- 
tion. Soon  Billy  and  Con  had  grayling  fry- 
ing, with  enough  and  to  spare  for  all,  since 
Rob  had  taken  a  half  dozen  fish,  Uncle  Dick 
as  many,  and  John  had  come  in  with  seven — 
one  of  them  rather  small,  as  he  explained  it. 
The  two  young  ranchmen  had  baskets  equally 
heavy,  for,  as  they  explained,  they  had  neigh- 

345 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

bors  who  did  not  like  to  eat  the  Henry's  Lake 
trout,  but  preferred  grayling,  so  they  thought 
it  wise  to  take  some  home  with  them. 

"Well  I  did  go  a  little  light  on  the  fishing, 
fellows,"  said  Uncle  Dick,  "because  I  want  you 
to  stay  here  one  more  day  before  we  start  out 
for  Bozeman.  That  means  two  nights  in  camp, 
which  will  bring  us  into  Bozeman  just  past  the 
middle  of  the  month,  with  our  summer's  job 
pretty  well  whipped." 

"Which  way  are  we  going  from  Billy's, 
Uncle  Dick?"  demanded  Jesse,  with  his  usual 
curiosity. 

"Not  yet  decided,"  replied  the  other.  "Wait 
until  we  get  up  there.  We  still  have  a  little 
work  to  do  in  studying  out  the  return  trip  of 
Meriwether  Lewis  and  William  Clark  in  the 
summer  of  1806." 

That  night  they  had  what  John  called  a  map 
party  on  the  table  in  the  friendly  ranchman's 
home.  He  and  the  two  young  Westerners 
joined  them  all  in  examining  the  maps  and  the 
the  great  river  from  St.  Louis. 

"That's  something  of  a  journey,  I  should 
say !"  commented  the  ranchman.  "I'll  warrant 
you  have  learned  a  good  many  things  you  did 
not  know  before.  Some  things  in  here  I  didn't 
know  before,  myself." 

346 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"It's  much  pleasanter,"  said  Rob,  "to  follow 
out  a  country  on  the  ground  than  it  is  to  do  it 
on  the  map.  Not  all  maps  are  correct — except 
John's,  here !  But  no  matter  how  good  a  map 
is,  it  never  means  anything  to  you  until  you 
have  followed  it  out  on  the  ground.  Just  look 
here,  for  instance,  at  the  great  crooked  sweep 
of  the  Continental  Divide.  Yet  here  we  have 
crossed  three  passes  over  the  Continental  Divide 
within  the  last  three  days — Red  Rock,  Ray- 
nolds,  and  Targhee — and  the  Targhee  divides 
the  Madison,  which  is  Atlantic  water,  from 
Henry's  Lake,  which  is  Pacific  water." 

"Yes,"  nodded  Uncle  Dick.  "There  are  not 
many  more  interesting  countries,  geographi- 
cally speaking,  than  this  right  where  we  are, 
at  the  head  of  the  great  river.  Lewis  and 
Clark  crossed  the  Rocky  Mountain  Divide 
seven  times,  at  six  different  places — up  North 
there.  They  crossed  the  Lemhi  Pass,  both  of 
them.  Then  they  crossed  the  Divide  twice 
more  into  the  Bitter  Roots,  then  crossed  it 
again  on  the  Lolo  Trail.  Then  they  came  back 
over  that  when  they  went  East,  and  Lewis 
crossed  the  pass  over  to  the  north,  alone,  and 
that  ought  to  be  called  his  pass.  And  Clark 
came  down  to  the  Gallatin  and  crossed  that 
pass  alone  to  the  Yellowstone  waters.  Yet  their 
23  347 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

names  are  on  almost  none  of  the  great  passes 
and  great  rivers  which  they  found.  Soon  they 
will  have  passed." 

One  more  day  of  beautiful  sport  on  the  crys- 
tal stream  that  ran  through  the  beautiful  valley, 
and  the  pleasant  party  of  new-made  friends 
met  around  the  camp  fire  for  the  last  time. 

"I  have  got  to  get  back  for  my  haying,"  said 
Chet,  who  had  proved  himself  a  fine  angler  as 
well  as  a  good  companion. 

"The  same  for  me,"  added  the  young  rancher 
from  the  head  of  the  lake.  So  it  was  agreed 
that  on  the  next  morning  they  should  separate. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 
AT  BILLY'S  RANCH 

blue  smoke  of  their  last  camp  fire  on 
1  the  South  Fork  rose  almost  straight  in  the 
still  air  of  a  clear  summer  day  as  their  party 
sat  around  their  last  breakfast.  Although  not 
actually  at  the  end  of  their  journey,  they  felt 
that  now  they  were  heading  away  from  these 
interesting  scenes,  so  that  a  sort  of  sadness 
fell  upon  them. 

"Cheer  up,  fellows!"  said  Billy  Williams. 
"You  are  not  out  of  scenery,  nor  out  of  sport 
yet,  by  any  means,  if  you  want  to  stop  for 
sport.  Besides,  there  is  one  other  thing  we 
haven't  finished  yet,"  he  added  turning  to 
Uncle  Dick. 

"Feel  in  your  right-hand  waistcoat  pocket, 
Jesse,"  said  the  latter. 

Jesse  did  so  with  a  smile  and  produced  the 
black,  glassy-looking  arrowhead  which  he  had 
found  at  the  Beaverhead  Rock  over  to  the 
northward,  many  days  before. 

"We  are  a  few  miles  west  of  the  Yellowstone 
Park  here,"  said  Uncle  Dick.  "We  will  have 

349 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

quite  a  party  in  our  car  with  all  the  luggage, 
but  they  are  used  to  seeing  cars  in  the  Park 
with  bundles  tied  all  over  the  running  boards. 
Now  I  move  you  that  we  go  over  to  Yellow- 
stone and  go  into  the  Park  as  far  as  the  forks 
of  the  Gibbon  and  the  Madison,  and  leave  our 
stuff  there  for  our  camp,  with  Con  to  take 
charge  of  it  and  make  camp.  Then  we  can  go 
on  up  the  Gibbon  and  on  to  the  Beaver  Mead- 
ows, where  the  great  black  cliff  is  that  is 
known  through  all  this  country  as  the  Obsidian 
Cliff.  I  shall  show  you  there,  Jesse,  the  whole 
face  of  a  mountain  of  this  same  black  glass,  as 
you  call  it.  And  that  mountain,  as  sure  as  you 
live,  was  known  by  all  the  Indians  for  hundreds 
of  miles  around  here.  It  was  just  like  the  great 
Red  Pipestone  quarries  of  Minnesota. 

"Now  you  begin  to  see  something  about  ex- 
ploring and  getting  across  country.  You  found 
that  arrowhead  on  the  hunting  ground  of  the 
Shoshonis  and  the  Bannacks.  Those  people 
hunted  clear  down  across  the  lower  end  of 
what  is  now  Montana,  down  the  Red  Rock 
River,  the  way  we  came  by  rail ;  and  over  the 
Raynolds  Pass,  where  you  boys  were;  and  over 
the  Targhee  Pass,  and  up  the  Madison  and  the 
Gibbon,  to  this  place  where  they  get  the  heads 
for  their  arrows. 

350 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"How  did  they  know?  Who  found  it  first? 
Nobody  can  answer  those  questions.  But  one 
great  truth  about  white  explorations  on  this 
Continent  you  must  know — there  was  not  one 
great  pass,  not  one  great  river,  not  one  great 
natural  scenic  feature,  which  was  not  known 
to  one  or  more  Indian  tribes  centuries  before 
the  white  men  came.  So  after  all,  we  as  ex- 
plorers are  not  so  much.  Fremont  was  not 
much  of  an  explorer,  much  as  you  reverence 
him.  Even  Lewis  and  Clark  had  been  preceded 
in  all  this  country  by  the  Indian  girl  and  her 
people.  And  those  people  had  been  every 
place  that  we  have  been — and  even  as  far  as 
Yellowstone  Park  and  into  its  interior 
as  far  as  the  Obsidian  Cliff.  There  is  no 
doubt  or  question  about  that,  although  it 
is  quite  true  that  obsidian  was  found  in 
other  volcanic  regions  of  different  parts  of  the 
West. 

"Jesse,  your  arrowhead  has  been  a  long  way 
from  home!  Are  you  going  to  take  it  back? 
Has  it  served  its  purpose  in  teaching  you  some- 
thing about  your  own  country?" 

Jesse  sat  silent  for  a  time,  then,  "Uncle 
Dick,"  said  he,  at  last,  "I  am  going  to  take  my 
arrowhead  back.  When  we  get  to  that  rock 
you  tell  about,  I  am  going  to  put  it  down  right 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

at  the  foot,  just  the  way  it  is,  with  other  pieces 
like  those  the  Indians  took  away." 

"Good !"  said  Uncle  Dick.  "The  little  senti- 
ment won't  hurt  you,  anyhow.  I  suppose  your 
arrowhead  will  remain  there  undiscovered  for 
a  thousand  years.  The  tourists  who  come  there 
now  in  their  touring  cars  look  at  that  black- 
faced  rock  about  half  a  second  and  whiz  by. 
They  want  to  make  the  next  lunch  station." 

"That's  no  lie,"  said  Billy  Williams.  "Folks 
nowadays  don't  know  how  to  travel." 

They  concluded  their  packing  arrangements, 
rolling  their  bed  rolls  tight  and  storing  them 
along  the  hood  of  the  car  and  on  the  running 
boards,  where  Con  had  fixed  up  a  little  rack  to 
carry  the  extra  baggage.  Saying  good-by  to 
their  hospitable  friends,  the  two  parties  now 
separated. 

Without  incident  the  journey  of  that  day 
was  completed  as  outlined  by  their  leader,  and 
that  night  they  spread  their  tent  in  a  public 
camping  ground  on  the  banks  of  the  Madison 
River,  in  sight  of  twenty  other  tents  besides 
their  own. 

"Nothing  much  here  of  interest,"  said  Uncle 
Dick,  "except  yonder  mountains.  The  Madi- 
son here  is  a  beautiful  stream,  but  fished  to 
death.  That  mountain  is  not  much  changed." 

352 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"What  about  it?"  said  Rob,  curiously. 

"That's  National  Park  Mountain.  We  are 
camping  now  precisely  where  the  Hayden, 
Doane,  and  Langford  exploring  party  camped 
when  they  were  going  out  in  1871  after  finish- 
ing the  first  exploration  of  Yellowstone  Park. 
It  was  right  here,  at  this  camping  place,  that 
Cornelius  Hedges,  one  of  their  number,  pro- 
posed the  establishment  of  the  Yellowstone 
Park,  so  that  all  of  this  wonderland  should 
be  preserved  forever." 

"Well,  said  Rob,  drawing  a  long  breath,  "we 
are  getting  into  some  history  now  around 
here!" 

But  they  talked  no  more  history  at  the  time, 
for  by  now  all  were  weary  with  the  journey. 
As  early  as  the  next  their  camp  fire  was  alight 
the  following  morning.  Billy  took  Jesse  up  to 
Gibbon  and  across  to  the  Obsidian  Cliff,  where 
he  carried  out  his  intention,  and  hid  his  ob- 
sidian arrowhead  at  the  foot  of  the  great  rock. 
"There!"  said  he,  "I'll  bet,  if  anybody  finds  it, 
he'll  wonder  who  made  it !" 

Soon  they  were  on  their  way  back  to  Yel- 
lowstone Station  on  the  Bozeman  road.  Fol- 
lowing it  out,  under  Con  O'Brien's  steady  driv- 
ing, and  asking  a  hundred  questions  of  Billy 
en  route,  they  finally  swept  down  late  in  the 

353 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

evening  into  the  beautiful  valley  of  the  Gallatin. 
Winding  among  the  farms,  they  pulled  up  at 
last  at  Billy  Williams's  comfortable  ranch  house 
and  soon  were  made  at  home. 

"Here  we  are,  fellows,  east  of  the  Three 
Forks  of  the  Missouri,"  said  Uncle  Dick,  when 
they  had  gotten  out  their  maps  for  that  eve- 
ning's study.  "At  first,  neither  Lewis  nor  Clark 
followed  the  Gallatin  at  all.  As  we  know,  Clark 
went  but  a  short  distance  up  the  Madison.  But 
when  the  explorers  were  going  east,  as  we  saw 
before,  Clark  came  down  to  the  Shoshoni  Cove, 
at  the  junction  where  we  made  our  lost  camp, 
over  west.  When  he  struck  in  here,  on  the 
Gallatin,  Clark  had  with  him  the  Indian  girl, 
Sacagawea.  Besides  the  Indian  woman  and 
her  child,  he  had  eleven  men  and  fifty  horses. 
Ordway,  as  we  have  seen,  had  taken  nine 
men  and  started  downstream  with  the  boats. 
No  one  knew  this  country  except  the  Indian 
girl. 

"Yes,  and  she  must  have  been  across  here 
before,  too,"  said  Billy.  "There  are  three 
passes  at  the  head  of  the  East  Gallatin — the 
Bozeman  and  the  Bridger  and  the  Flathead. 
The  Indian  girl  told  them  to  take  the  one  far- 
thest south,  which  is  Bozeman  Pass. 

"The  books  say  that  on  July  13th  Clark 
354 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

camped  just  where  the  town  of  Logan  is,  in 
the  Gallatin  Valley.  They  say  he  followed 
southeast  from  there  and  crossed  Bozeman 
Creek  near  this  town.  The  Indian  girl  knew 
there  was  a  buffalo  road  there,  and  they  stuck 
to  that.  Good  authorities  think  that  they 
camped,  July  14th,  near  where  old  Fort  Ellis 
afterward  was  located.  That's  across  the  East 
Gallatin.  There  is  an  easy  pass  there,  and 
there  is  no  doubt  at  all  that  the  Indian  girl 
led  Clark  through  that  easiest  pass,  which  the 
Indians  would  be  sure  to  find  when  going  be- 
tween their  hunting  ranges. 

"Of  course,  old  man  Bozeman  did  not  come 
in  here  until  the  mining  strikes,  1863  or  1864. 
He  was  a  freighter  and  knew  this  country, 
although  he  didn't  know  it  well  enough  to  keep 
from  getting  killed  by  the  Indians." 

"Up  the  Gallatin,  too,"  went  on  Billy,  "is 
where  they  say  John  Colter  ran  after  he  got 
away  from  the  Blackf eet.  He  didn't  have  any 
clothes  on  to  speak  of  even  then — he  sure  trav- 
eled light.  But,  anyhow,  he  lived  to  discover 
Yellowstone  Park,  or  part  of  it,  and  to  tell  a 
lot  of  stories  which  everybody  said  were  lies." 

"Can  we  see  much  of  the  trail,  if  we  go  over 
with  the  pack  train  ?"  asked  Rob. 

"Not  so  very  much,"  said  Billy.  "Even  the 
355 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

old  road  is  wiped  out,  now  that  the  railroad 
has  come.  In  some  places  you  can  find  where 
the  trail  once  ran,  or  is  supposed  to  have  run, 
but  you  have  to  go  by  the  general  landmarks 
now. 

"When  you  come  to  the  central  ridge  be- 
yond old  Ellis,  you  get  the  last  summit  between 
here  and  Yellowstone  waters.  The  tunnel  runs 
under  that  now.  The  railroad  books  say  that 
is  fifty-five  hundred  and  sixty-five  feet — the 
highest  of  the  three  northern  transcontinental 
passes." 

"So  you  can  figure  now,  I  reckon,"  he  con- 
cluded, "that  you  are  mighty  near  at  the  head 
of  the  Gallatin,  a  day's  march  from  here.  And 
if  you  want  to,  you  can  take  the  railroad  in 
town,  all  the  way  down  the  Yellowstone  and 
clean  on  home  to  Chicago  or  St.  Louis,  without 
getting  off  the  cars." 

"Well,  since  we  are  so  near  the  end  of  the 
trail,  young  gentlemen,"  began  Uncle  Dick,  at 
this  point,  "what  do  you  say  we  ought  to  do?" 

"Well,  the  first  thing  we  ought  to  do,"  said 
John,  "before  we  go  home,  is  not  to  leave  all 
those  people  out  in  the  wilderness.  We  have 
got  Clark  and  eleven  people  here  on  the  Galla- 
tin, and  Captain  Lewis  is  away  up  on  the 
Marias,  and  Gass  and  Ordway  are  scattered 

356 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

every  which  way  between  here  and  the  Great 
Falls." 

"All  right,  all  right!"  rejoined  Uncle  Dick. 
"Get  out  your  Journal  now,  and  we  will  see 
what  became  of  Captain  Lewis.  We  won't  fol- 
low him  day  by  day,  and  we  will  just  take  up 
his  trail  somewhere  near  Missoula. 

"See  here,  now.  He  must  have  crossed  what 
is  called  Clark's  Fork — all  of  that  river,  part 
of  which  is  called  Hell  Gate  River,  ought  to 
be  called  after  Clark.  He  went  up  the  Hell 
Gate  River,  without  any  guides,  but  he  must 
have  struck  an  Indian  trail  which  led  him  over 
east.  On  the  fourth  day,  that  is  on  July  7th, 
he  reached  the  pass  which  is  called  even  now 
Lewis  and  Clark's  Pass — the  only  pass  named 
after  either  of  those  explorers,  although  only 
one  of  them  ever  saw  it. 

"Now,  you  see,  they  were  opposite  the  head- 
waters of  the  Dearborn  River — the  same 
stream  where  Clark  left  the  boats  and  went  up 
the  river  on  foot  when  they  were  going  west 
the  preceding  year.  They  knew  where  they 
were  when  they  got  here,  and  felt  pretty  fairly 
safe. 

"But  Lewis  wanted  to  see  about  that  country 
north  of  the  Great  Falls.  They  were  now 
among  the  buffalo  once  more  and  glad  enough 

357 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

to  find  them.  They  hunted  down  the  Sun  River 
to  their  old  camp  above  the  Great  Falls.  Here 
they  made  a  couple  of  bull  boats,  and  on  July 
12th  they  crossed  to  the  old  camp  and  found 
the  cache  which  they  had  made  there.  A  good 
many  of  the  things  were  spoiled  in  the  cache, 
which  they  had  built  too  low,  so  that  the  high 
water  had  flooded  it. 

"Now  they  reached  their  old  friends,  the 
white  bears,  which  were  just  as  ferocious  as 
ever.  So  were  the  mosquitoes.  Lewis  dreads 
these  mosquitoes  more  than  anything  else. 

"Now  the  Journal  says  that  Lewis  deter- 
mined to  go  up  the  Marias  River.  He  left 
McNeal,  Thompson  and  Goodrich,  Gass,  Fra- 
zier  and  Werner,  here  at  the  Falls.  He  took 
with  him  six  horses  and  had  along  Drewyer 
and  the  two  Fields  boys — about  his  best 
hunters.  They  left  Sergeant  Gass  four  horses, 
so  that  he  could  get  the  boats  around  the 
portage  as  soon  as  Ordway  and  the  boats  came 
down  the  Missouri. 

"Now  I  want  you  to  stop  and  think  how  these 
people  were  making  connections,  scattered  all 
through  this  country  as  they  were.  On  July 
19th,  here  came  Ordway  and  his  nine  men 
with  the  canoes!  Then  they  doubled  party 
again,  to  portage,  and  in  four  days,  with  the 

358 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

aid  of  the  horses,  they  got  the  stuff  all  below 
the  Falls.  Gass  and  one  man  swam  the  horses 
across  the  river;  Ordway  and  the  others  took 
the  canoes.  They  all  reached  the  mouth  of  the 
Marias  River  July  28th.  By  that  time,  of 
course,  Clark  was  over  on  the  Yellowstone, 
having  crossed  the  Gallatin  Pass  from  here. 

"Now  Lewis  was  on  the  north  side  of  the 
river  with  three  men.  He  knew  he  was  going 
up  into  the  Blackfeet  country,  and  he  must 
have  known  something  of  the  reputation  of  that 
tribe.  But  those  men  would  go  almost  any- 
where. Now  they  were  among  the  buffalo,  so 
they  felt  safe  for  food. 

"They  left  the  river  July  16th,  and  on  July 
21st  they  got  into  country  which  you  and  I  can 
identify — the  mouth  of  Two  Medicine  Creek, 
where  it  meets  the  Cutbank,  both  of  which 
rise  in  Glacier  Park.  I've  had  fine  fishing  up 
in  there. 

"Now  they  pushed  on  up  north  up  the  Cut- 
bank,  forded  where  the  Great  Northern  Rail- 
road is  now,  and  went  on  five  miles  beyond  that. 
You  see,  they  were  now  clear  up  almost  to  the 
northern  line  of  Montana ;  whereas  you  and  I 
have  seen  them  almost  to  the  southern  line  of 
Montana.  And  look  at  all  the  waterways  they 
had  covered ! 

359 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"This  was  Lewis's  farthest  north.  Drewyer 
found  out  that  there  were  Indians  in  that  coun- 
try. Perhaps  that  accounted  for  the  scarcity 
of  game  they  now  felt.  They  concluded  to 
turn  back  down  the  river,  and  on  July  26th — 
which  is  the  day  Gass  and  Ordway  finished 
their  portage  at  the  Great  Falls — they  headed 
southeast  for  the  mouth  of  the  Marias,  trust- 
ing to  Providence  they  would  meet  their  men 
there  and  that  they  would  eventually  meet 
Clark  at  the  mouth  of  the  Yellowstone. 

"Now  when  you  come  to  make  all  these 
things  tally  out  on  the  ground,  it  is  quite  a 
proposition,  isn't  it?" 

The  boys  all  looked  at  him  with  open 
eyes,  as  they  followed  out  on  the  map  the 
widely  separated  journeys  of  the  two  great 
chiefs. 

"Very  well,"  resumed  Uncle  Dick,  "they  got 
down  a  mile  below  Badger  Creek,  on  the  Two 
Medicine  River.  Now  they  had  the  one  and 
only  dangerous  encounter  with  the  Indians 
which  any  of  them  met  throughout  the  whole 
two  years'  trip.  It  was  at  that  time  hostility 
of  the  Blackfeet  against  the  whites  began. 
They  ran  into  a  bunch  of  Indians.  There  were 
eight  of  them,  who  turned  out  to  be  the  Minne- 
tarees  of  the  North,  whom  they  knew  to  be 

360 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

one  of  the  most  dangerous  bands  of  all  that 
neighborhood. 

"It  seemed  best  to  make  friends,  so  they 
camped  with  the  Indians  that  night  and  slept 
in  their  tents.  Toward  morning  the  Indians 
made  their  break — seized  the  guns  of  all  four 
of  the  men  and  started  out  to  steal  the  horses. 

"J.  Fields  and  his  brother  started  out  after 
one  Indian  with  the  rifles.  The  fellow  hung 
on  to  them,  and  R.  Fields  stabbed  the  Indian, 
killing  him  on  the  spot.  This  uproar  woke  up 
Drewyer  and  Lewis,  who  were  in  the  tepee. 
Drewyer  and  Lewis  got  possession  of  their 
rifles.  Lewis  called  to  the  Indians  to  stop  run- 
ning off  his  horses.  These  savages  showed 
fight,  and  Lewis  shot  one  of  them  through  the 
body,  which  accounted  for  two  of  the  savages 
in  a  few  moments. 

"In  a  very  little  time  longer  the  four  white 
men  had  all  their  camp  outfit  and  four  horses 
belonging  to  the  Indians,  although  they  had  lost 
one  of  their  own  horses.  They  had  met  their 
first  Indian  fight,  and  got  out  of  it  rather  well. 

"Now  followed  what  I  suppose  was  one  of 
the  fastest  rides  ever  made  on  the  Western 
prairies.  Lewis  and  his  men  mounted  and 
started  hotfoot  for  the  mouth  of  the  Marias 
River.  To  make  the  story  of  it,  at  least,  short, 

361 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

they  rode  about  one  hundred  and  twenty  miles 
in  a  little  over  twenty- four  hours. 

"We  have  seen  that  Gass,  Ordway,  and  the 
other  men  were  coming  down  from  the  Falls 
with  the  boats.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  they  had 
just  rounded  the  bend,  approaching  the  place 
where  old  Fort  Benton  later  was  to  stand,  when 
Lewis  and  his  men  met  them.  That  was  what 
I  call  good  luck,  and  a  whole  lot  of  it!  Just 
look  where  they  had  been  and  what  they  had 
been  through ! 

"Well,  now,  part  of  our  men  had  got  to- 
gether. Lewis  and  his  companions  cut  loose 
their  horses  on  the  plains.  They  all  hurried 
into  the  canoes  and  dropped  down  to  the  mouth 
of  the  Marias.  Here  they  abandoned  the  rest 
of  their  horses.  They  dug  up  the  cache  which 
they  had  left  here  in  the  previous  year.  This 
cache  also  was  pretty  badly  damaged,  but  they 
got  some  stuff  out  of  it.  Indeed,  some  of  the 
caches  were  in  good  condition,  although  the 
big  red  boat  they  had  left  was  no  longer  of 
any  use.  They  stripped  her  of  her  iron  and 
set  out  by  canoes,  as  soon  as  they  could,  because 
by  that  time  they  did  not  know  what  the  Indians 
would  be  apt  to  do  to  them. 

"Now  they  got  down  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Milk  River  on  August  4th,  and  they  reached 

362 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

the  mouth  of  the  Yellowstone  on  August  7th. 
And  there  what  do  you  suppose  they  found? 
Was  Clark  there  ahead  of  them,  or  was  Lewis 
to  wait  for  Clark?" 

"I  know!"  said  Jesse.  "Clark  beat  them 
down.  He  left  a  letter  for  them,  didn't  he?" 

"That's  just  what  he  did,  and  this  time  he 
didn't  leave  it  on  a  green  stick  for  a  beaver 
to  carry  off,  either. 

"No,  just  as  if  he  had  stepped  to  a  post- 
office  window  and  asked  for  a  letter,  Lewis 
found  this  note  awaiting  him,  telling  him  Clark 
had  been  there  for  several  days  and  would  wait 
for  them  a  few  miles  down  the  river,  on  the 
right-hand  side.  They  were  at  this  time  mak- 
ing ninety  miles  a  day — one  hundred  miles  on 
the  last  day  of  their  travels. 

"Now  it  would  seem  that  Clark  was  taking 
a  good  many  chances,  because  all  he  had  done 
was  to  write  a  note  which  might  have  been 
lost,  and  to  scratch  a  few  words  in  the  sand 
which  might  have  been  washed  out.  But  the 
luck  of  Lewis  held  until  August  llth.  On  that 
day,  as  you  remember,  he  was  accidentally  shot 
through  the  hips  by  one  of  his  men  while  hunt- 
ing elk,  so  that  when,  on  August  12th,  he  finally 
overtook  Captain  Clark,  Lewis  was  lying  in 
his  boat,  crippled.  All  through  the  trip  Lewis 
24  363 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

had  had  many  more  dangerous  situations  and 
narrow  escapes  than  Clark  had. 

"In  this  way,  traveling  many  times  faster 
coming  east  than  they  had  going  west,  these 
two  young  men,  and  all  of  their  widely  scat- 
tered parties,  met  in  this  singular  reunion,  at 
no  place  in  particular,  without  ever  having  had 
any  reason  in  particular  for  hoping  they  ever 
would  meet  at  all ! 

"But  they  did  hope.  And  they  did  meet. 
And  if  you  put  it  to  me  as  an  engineer,  young 
gentlemen,  I  shall  say  that  was  the  most  ex- 
traordinary instance  of  going  through  unknown 
country  on  workmanlike  basis  I  ever  heard  of 
in  all  my  life!  Nor  do  I  think  all  the  world 
could  produce  its  like." 

They  sat  in  wondering  silence  for  a  time, 
marveling  at  the  perfect  ability  shown  by  these 
young  army  officers  in  this  formerly  wild  and 
unknown  country.  Uncle  Dick  closed  the  pages 
of  his  Journal,  which  he  had  been  following 
through  rapidly,  and  seemed  inclined  to  talk 
no  further. 

"You  tell  it,  Billy !"  said  Jesse,  turning  to 
Billy  Williams,  who  had  been  an  attentive 
listener  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  table. 

"You  mean  that  I  shall  bring  up  the  Clark 
story?" 

364 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

The  boys  assented  to  this. 

Billy  went  on,  his  finger  now  on  the  map  in 
turn. 

"Take  Clark  along  in  here  on  the  Gallatin, 
near  this  ranch,  say  July  15th,  about  one  month 
ahead  of  our  date  now.  He  is  going  east  with 
his  party.  He  has  got  the  Indian  girl  and 
some  horses  and  some  good  men.  All  right. 
On  July  15th  he  starts  across  the  Divide,  head- 
ing for  the  Yellowstone  Valley. 

"Naturally,  he  found  that  plumb  easy.  He 
struck  into  one  of  the  creeks  that  run  down 
into  the  Yellowstone.  It  was  only  nine  miles 
down  that  to  the  Yellowstone  River  itself,  and 
they  hit  that  just  a  mile  below  where  it  comes 
out  of  the  Rockies  from  up  yonder  in  Yellow- 
stone Park,  where  we  all  were  only  yesterday. 

"Clark  had  the  easiest  end  of  it,  in  some 
ways.  He  said  he  had  to  go  only  forty-eight 
miles  from  the  Three  Forks  to  hit  the  Yellow- 
stone. If  he  had  poled  a  canoe  up  the  Gallatin, 
he  would  not  have  had  to  portage  over  eighteen 
miles. 

"Those  are  the  distances  that  Clark  esti- 
mates, but  for  once  he  underestimates,  I  don't 
know  why.  Wheeler  points  out  that  from 
Three  Forks  to  Livingston  is  fifty-four  miles, 
and  Clark  came  down  off  the  Divide  at  a  place 

365 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

just  above  Livingston.  Anyhow,  I'll  bet  he  was 
glad  when  he  saw  the  old  Yellowstone  Valley. 
He  had  horses  now,  you  see,  and  he  was  hit- 
ting the  trail  hard. 

"He  went  down  the  north  side  of  the  Yel- 
lowstone, and  by  July  17th  he  was  down  as  far 
as  Big  Timber  and  Boulder  River.  I  suppose 
they  would  have  kept  on  downstream  on  horse- 
back, but  one  of  their  men,  Gibson,  got  snagged 
in  a  fall  from  his  horse,  so  somewhere  near  the 
mouth  of  the  Stillwater  they  concluded  to 
make  some  canoes,  so  that  Gibson  could  ride 
by  boat. 

"Now,  on  July  21st,  along  comes  a  nice  party 
of  Crows  and  steals  twenty-four  of  their 
horses.  They  hunt  a  couple  of  days  for  the 
horses,  but  can't  find  them — trust  the  Crows 
for  that!  So  the  canoes  are  mighty  useful. 
They  built  two  of  them  twenty-eight  feet  long 
and  about  two  feet  in  the  beam  and  lashed  them 
together,  so  they  had  quite  a  craft. 

"On  July  24th,  about  the  time  Gass  and  his 
men  were  making  the  portage  at  the  Great 
Falls,  Clark  took  to  the  boats,  but  he  put  the  rest 
of  the  horses  in  charge  of  Pryor,  Shannon,  and 
Windsor. 

"So,  you  see,  they  were  busted  up  again,  half 
afloat  and  half  on  shore,  which  is  always  bad. 

366 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

Pryor  had  it  the  hardest.  He  could  hardly 
keep  his  horses  together.  But  they  joined  up 
somewhere  near  where  Billings  is  to-day.  It 
was  plumb  easy  getting  downstream  in  the 
boats,  for  the  Yellowstone  is  lively  water,  and 
plenty  of  it.  They  could  make  fifty,  sixty,  or 
seventy  miles  a  day,  with  no  trouble  at  all ;  but 
horses  can't  go  that  fast. 

"On  July  25th  they  got  down  to  a  place  called 
Pompey's  Pillar,  a  big  rock  that  sticks  up  out  of 
the  valley  floor.  Clark  cut  his  name  on  this 
rock,  which  is  not  so  far  from  the  railway 
station  they  call  Pompey's  Pillar  to-day.  The 
first  engineers  of  the  railroad  that  came  up  the 
valley  of  the  Yellowstone  put  a  double  iron 
screen  over  Clark's  inscription  on  this  rock, 
drilled  in  the  corner  posts  and  anchored  them, 
so  no  one  could  get  at  the  old  signature.  A 
lot  of  other  names  are  there,  but  I  reckon  you 
could  still  see  the  name  of  William  Clark,  July 
25,  1806.  It  has  been  photographed,  so  there 
is  no  mistake. 

"Now  the  Journal  says  they  got  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Big  Horn  River  on  July  26th.  That, 
you  know,  is  the  place  where  Manuel  Lisa  made 
his  trading  post  in  1807.  So  now  we  are  begin- 
ning to  lap  over  a  lot  of  dates  and  a  lot  of 
things. 

367 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

"Well,  the  big  Custer  fight  on  June  25,  1876, 
took  place  not  so  far  from  the  mouth  of  the 
Big  Horn  River.  From  the  time  that  Lewis 
and  Clark  came  through,  up  to  the  time  of  the 
railroads  and  the  army  posts,  the  Indians  had 
kept  getting  worse. 

"From  now  on  the  Clark  parties  were  in  the 
game  country,  of  course.  The  boats  had  all 
the  best  of  it — -except  for  the  mosquitoes,  of 
which  Clark  continually  complained.  It  was 
the  mosquitoes  that  drove  Clark  away  from  the 
mouth  of  the  Yellowstone,  which  he  reached 
August  3d. 

"He  kept  going  on  down  the  river  below  the 
mouth  of  the  Yellowstone,  trying  to  get  away 
from  the  mosquitoes.  When  he  dodged  the 
mosquitoes  he  ran  into  white  bears.  There 
was  something  doing  every  minute  in  those 
days. 

"They  seemed  to  have  had  a  trustful  way  of 
hoping  everything  would  come  out  all  right, 
those  fellows.  Clark  did  not  know  where 
Lewis  was,  or  Ordway,  or  Gass,  or  where 
Pryor  and  his  men  were.  Well,  the  Pryor 
party  didn't  catch  up  with  Clark  until  August 
8th — and  they  didn't  have  a  horse  to  their 
name! 

"You  see,  three  days  after  they  left  Clark, 
368 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

near  where  Billings  is,  the  Indians  jumped  them 
once  more  and  stole  their  last  horse.  They 
took  a  lesson  from  the  Indians  and  made  two 
bull  boats,  round  ones  like  the  Mandans  used. 
I  don't  suppose  they  liked  that  kind  of  travel- 
ing, but  they  had  to  do  it.  Anyhow,  it  worked, 
and  hardi  as  it  is  to  believe,  they  made 
their  way  downstream  without  any  serious 
accident. 

"I  don't  know  whether  you  call  all  of  this 
good  traveling  as  much  as  it  was  good  luck, 
but  anyhow  they  were  beginning  to  pick  up 
their  friends.  Just  look  on  the  map  and  see 
how  far  it  is  from  the  mouth  of  the  Big  Horn 
River  up  across  to  the  mouth  of  Two  Medicine 
Creek — that's  how  far  Clark  and  Lewis  were 
apart,  and  they  had  been  apart  for  considerable 
over  a  month.  Lewis  might  have  been  killed 
and  no  one  could  have  known  it  had  happened, 
and  so  might  Clark. 

"Now  they  met  a  couple  of  white  men  who 
were  pushing  up  the  river,  intending  to  hunt 
up  the  Yellowstone.  Colter  and  his  pal  go 
along  up  the  river  a  little  ways,  too. 

"And  now  you  pick  up  the  Lewis  story. 
Lewis  goes  down  in  his  boat,  crippled.  Colter 
and  the  other  man  and  the  two  traders  turn 
back;  and  pretty  soon,  on  August  12th,  they 

369 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

come  on  Clark's  party  landed  on  the  shore 
of  the  Missouri ;  fighting  mosquitoes ! 

"Well,  it  only  took  them  a  couple  of  days 
from  that  time  to  get  to  the  Mandan  villages." 

"That's  where  we  left  our  boat,  the  Adven- 
turer!" exclaimed  Jesse.  "Now  what  do  you 
say,  boys — hasn't  this  been  one  exciting  finish  ?" 

"But  you  haven't  told  us  yet,  Uncle  Dick, 
what  we  are  going  to  do/'  said  Rob. 

"I'll  tell  you  what  to  do  now,"  said  Uncle 
Dick.  "Go  to  bed,  all  of  you.  In  the  morning 
we  will  make  our  plans  at  the  breakfast  table." 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 

HOMEWARD  BOUND 

HPHEY  met  at  the  breakfast  table  where 
1  Billy,  who  kept  a  bachelor  home,  had 
busied  himself  preparing  a  final  good  meal  for 
them.  They  had  abundance  of  nicely  browned 
trout  with  fresh  eggs,  milk,  and  good  bread. 

The  young  travelers  ate  in  silence,  with  the 
presentiment  that  this  was  their  last  breakfast 
on  the  trail.  At  length  Rob  turned  to  the  leader 
of  their  party  with  an  inquiring  look. 

"Well,  I'll  tell  you  how  I  feel,  after  thinking 
it  over,"  said  Uncle  Dick.  "I  know  you  hate 
to  say  good-by  to  Sleepy  and  Nigger,  not  to 
mention  our  friend  Billy  Williams  here,  who 
is  as  good  a  mountain  man  as  you  are  apt  to 
find  and  who  surely  has  been  fine  to  us. 

"But  now  we  are  right  on  a  wagon  road. 
There  is  no  excitement  in  taking  a  pack  train 
for  a  couple  of  days  from  here  over  to  Living- 
ston. There  is  not  much  excitement  in  taking 
a  train  at  Bozeman  and  going  over  to  Living- 
ston and  stopping  off. 

"Of  course,  we  can  go  back  to  the  junction 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

and  take  a  train  to  Great  Falls,  if  you  want  to 
do  that.  We  have  left  our  two  outboard  motors 
over  there,  not  knowing  what  we  might  want 
to  do  going  back.  Now  we  could  have  those 
motors  shipped  over  to  us  here,  and  we  could 
go  down  to  the  Yellowstone  in  a  skiff,  no  doubt. 
Or  we  could  go  up  to  Great  Falls  and  buy  a 
boat,  and  run  down  the  Missouri.  We'd  make 
mighty  good  time  either  way,  by  river. 

"But  I  somehow  feel  that  we  have  brought 
our  men  out  of  the  expedition  and  we  have  in 
a  way  worn  the  edge  off  our  trip.  So  what  I 
think  we  had  better  do  is  to  call  this  our  last 
morning  in  camp  with  Billy  here,  hoping  we 
may  meet  him  some  other  time.  We  can  take 
our  train  here,  straight  through  to  St.  Paul,  and 
transfer  there  for  St.  Louis — all  by  rail.  That 
will  put  us  home  about  August  20th,  or,  say, 
a  week  longer  than  three  months  out  from  the 
mouth  of  the  Missouri. 

"As  you  know,  Lewis  and  Clark  came  down 
the  Missouri  in  jig  time.  They  left  the  Mandan 
villages  on  August  17th.  Here  Colter  had  left 
them  and  gone  back  up  the  Yellowstone  with 
the  two  white  traders,  later  to  become  famous 
as  the  first  discoverer  of  the  Yellowstone. 
Here  they  left  Chaboneau,  and  the  game  little 
Indian  woman,  his  wife  Sacagawea. 

3/2 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

"I  somehow  can't  fancy  that  they  ever  did 
enough  for  that  Indian  girl.  Without  her  they 
never  would  have  got  across  and  never  would 
have  got  back  the  way  they  did.  She  was 
worth  any  ten  men  of  the  entire  party.  Well, 
Lewis  and  Clark  were  brief  men.  Perhaps 
they  did  more  for  her,  perhaps  they  thanked 
her  more,  than  they  have  set  down  in  their 
journals.  Knowing  them  as  we  ought  to,  I 
rather  think  they  did,  but  they  were  too  shy  to 
say  much  about  it.  So  there  at  the  Mandans 
we  are  obliged  to  leave  some  of  our  party.  The 
others  all  reached  St.  Louis  about  noon  on 
September  23d. 

"What  they  must  have  left,  how  they  were 
received  is  something  which  we  do  not  need 
to  take  up  now.  At  least,  they  were  kept  busy 
by  their  friends  in  St.  Louis,  be  sure  of  that. 

"And  so  closed  that  story  of  the  two  great 
travelers  in  whose  footsteps  we  have  been 
traveling  this  summer,  my  young  friends.  They 
did  not  claim  ever  to  be  heroes.  They  did  their 
work  simply  and  quietly,  with  no  bluff  and  no 
pretense.  I  don't  believe  anyone  in  all  the 
world  to-day  can  realize  what  those  men  actu- 
ally did. 

"Perhaps  we,  who  have  followed  after  them, 
doing  in  three  months  as  much  as  we  have,  can 

373 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

get  a  little  notion  of  a  part  of  what  their  jour- 
ney meant,  even  skipping  as  we  have.  But  that 
they  have  been  sufficiently  honored,  or  that 
enough  of  our  Americans  really  understand 
what  they  did,  I  myself  never  have  believed." 

Uncle  Dick  turned  away  from  the  table  and 
walked  out  into  the  open  air,  where  he  was 
silent  for  quite  a  time. 

"Give  your  bed  rolls  to  Billy,"  said  he,  at 
length,  to  his  young  friends.  "He  will  take 
care  of  those  buffalo  robes  forever.  We  may 
need  them  again,  some  time,  all  together.  I 
will  telegraph  to  have  the  outboard  motors  sent 
down  to  be  fitted  on  our  boat,  the  Adventurer, 
at  Mandan.  Of  course,  we  could  run  down 
the  Missouri  a  hundred  or  maybe  one  hundred 
and  fifty  miles  a  day ;  but  as  I  said  to  you,  that 
country  is  getting  old  now  and  the  edge  of  our 
trip  is  wearing  off.  We  have  been  dodging 
towns  and  farms  long  enough.  Let's  get  on 
the  train  and  go  straight  home !" 

And  so  now,  after  most  reluctant  farewells 
to  Billy  Williams  and  Con  O'Brien,  the  young 
explorers,  light  of  luggage,  and,  indeed,  not 
heavy  of  heart,  after  all,  changed  their  trans- 
portation that  very  day  to  the  "medicine 
wagons/'  as  the  Indians  formerly  called  railway 
trains,  and  soon  were  speeding  eastward  out 

374 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

of  the  Rocky  Mountains  and  across  the  great 
Plains  and  Prairies. 

At  St.  Paul  they  changed  for  the  train  to 
St.  Louis.  En  route  they  made  no  further 
reference  to  their  own  journals,  and  even  John 
had  ceased  his  interminable  work  on  his  hand- 
made maps.  The  Journal,  however — that  great 
record  of  the  Lewis  and  Clark  expedition  up 
the  Missouri — remained  always  easily  acces- 
sible ;  and  just  before  the  termination  of  their 
journey  Uncle  Dick  picked  it  up  once  more  and 
called  his  young  friends  around  him. 

"We  will  soon  be  in  St.  Louis  now,"  said 
he.  "Here  is  where  our  explorers  started  out, 
and  here  is  where  they  returned.  Here  is 
where  William  Clark  did  his  great  work  as  the 
first  Indian  Commissioner.  Here  is  where  poor 
Meriwether  Lewis  started  east,  three  years 
after  he  had  finished  his  great  journey,  and 
met  his  tragic  death  in  the  forests  of  Tennessee. 
No  one  will  know  what  that  man  thought.  Per- 
haps even  then  he  was  pondering  on  the  ingrati- 
tude of  republics. 

"But  here  is  one  thing  which  I  wish  every 
admirer  of  Lewis  and  Clark  would  read  and 
remember — you  can  remember  it,  young 
friends,  if  you  please.  It  is  what  Meriwether 
Lewis  wrote,  out  there  in  the  mountains  near 

375 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

the  Continental  Divide,  when  he  made  up  his 
Journal  on  the  evening  of  his  birthday.  Write 
it  down,  boys,  just  as  he  wrote  it,  ill  spelling  and 
all,  so  that  you  may  see  what  he  was  doing  and 
what  he  was  thinking  part  of  the  time  at  least : 

"To-day  I  had  the  raw  hides  put  in  the  water  in  order 
to  cut  them  in  throngs  proper  for  lashing  the  packages 
and  forming  the  necessary  geer  for  pack  horses,  a  busi- 
ness which  I  fortunately  had  not  to  learn  on  this  occa- 
sion. Drewyer  Killed  one  deer  this  evening,  a  beaver 
was  also  caught  on  by  one  of  the  party.  I  had  the  net  ar- 
ranged and  set  this  evening  to  catch  some  trout  which  we 
could  see  in  great  abundance  at  the  bottom  of  the  river. 

"This  day  I  completed  my  thirty  first  year,  and  con- 
ceived that  I  had  in  all  human  probability  now  existed 
about  half  the  period  which  I  am  to  remain  in  this 
Sublunary  world.  I  reflected  that  I  had  as  yet  done  but 
little,  very  little,  indeed,  to  further  the  hapiness  of  the 
human  race,  or  to  advance  the  information  of  the  suc- 
ceeding generation.  I  viewed  with  regret  the  many 
hours  I  have  spent  in  indolence,  and  now  soarly  feel 
the  want  of  that  information  which  those  hours  would 
have  given  me  had  they  been  judiciously  expended, 
but  since  they  are  past  and  cannot  be  recalled,  I  dash 
from  me  the  gloomy  thought,  and  resolved  in  future, 
to  redouble  my  exertions  and  at  least  indeavour  to  pro- 
mote those  two  primary  objects  of  human  existence, 
by  giving  them  the  aid  of  that  portion  of  talents  which 
nature  and  fortune  have  bestoed  on  me ;  or  in  future,  to 
live  for  mankind,  as  I  have  heretofore  lived  for  myself. 

"So  there  you  are,  young  men,"  concluded 
Uncle  Dick,  rising  and  reaching  for  his  hat  as 
the  train  began  to  near  the  environs  of  the  busy 

376 


ON  THE  MISSOURI 

city.  "If  you  must  think  of  something  strik- 
ing, something  worth  remembering,  out  of  all 
the  pleasant  memories  you  hold  from  our  little 
journey  this  year — you  Young  Alaskans,  now 
beginning  to  explore  the  history  of  your  own 
wonderful  country — set  down  this  picture  of 
Captain  Meriwether  Lewis,  thirty-one  years 
old,  with  more  responsibilities,  more  of  conse- 
quences, more  future,  on  his  shoulders  right 
then  than  any  other  officer  of  our  army  ever 
had,  sitting  there  by  his  little  fire  writing  in 
his  notebook  the  same  as  you,  Rob,  and  you, 
Jesse,  and  you,  John,  have  written  in  yours — 
and  after  that,  remember  what  he  wrote.  Not 
so  very  conceited,  was  he? 

"There  were  two  men  who  were  not  think- 
ing of  politics  nor  of  personal  profit  in  any 
way.  They  did  not  hunt  for  advancement,  they 
let  that  hunt  them.  They  were  not  working 
for  money ;  they  never  had  much  money,  either 
one  of  them.  They  were  not  working  for  glory ; 
they  never  had  much  glory,  either  of  them; 
they  always  lacked  the  recognition  they  ought 
to  have  had,  and  they  are  almost  forgotten 
to-day,  as  they  ought  not  to  be.  They  did  their 
work  because  it  was  there  to  do,  out  of  a  sense 
of  duty ;  they  were  content  with  that. 

"So  now  out  of  all  our  travels  up  to  this 
377 


THE  YOUNG  ALASKANS 

date,  I  don't  know  that  there  is  any  experience 
we've  had  that  will  bring  us  a  much  bigger 
lesson  than  this  one.  Write  it  in  your  note- 
books— what  Meriwether  Lewis  wrote  in  his 
notebook,  that  day  in  the  mountains.  When 
you  are  thirty-one,  check  back  in  your  note- 
books and  see  if  you  can  write  what  he  could. 

"Yes,  I  hope  that  you  may  resolve  in  future 
to  'redouble  your  exertions.'  I  hope  you  may 
give  a  'portion  of  the  talents  which  nature  and 
fortune  have  bestowed  on  you/  for  the  sake  of 
mankind — for  the  sake  of  your  country,  young 
gentlemen,  and  not  wholly  for  the  sake  of 
yourselves." 

The  train  rolled  into  the  great  railway  sta- 
tion. Wondering  onlookers  stopped  for  a 
moment  and  turned  as  they  saw  three  lean, 
sunbrowned  boys  stand  at  attention  and  give 
the  Scout  salute  to  the  older  man  who  turned 
to  them  and,  smiling,  snapped  his  hand  into  the 
regulation  salute  of  the  Army. 

And  so,  as  Jesse  smilingly  said,  the  Company 
of  Volunteers  for  Northwestern  Discovery  dis- 
banded for  that  year. 

THE  END 


